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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Month: January 2024

January 2, 2024January 2, 2024 by Dave Bonta

An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the wall: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, mourning doves, wind
January 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and quiet before dawn. A half-inch of fresh snow sticks to everything, glowing faintly in the light of a hidden moon.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags moon, snow 1 Comment
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On This Day

  • August 8, 2025
    Mid-morning and the sun is just struggling free of clouds and/or smoke. A chicken cackles in the distance. Annual cicadas exchange raspy notes.
  • August 8, 2024
    Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.
  • August 8, 2023
    Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
  • August 8, 2022
    Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.
  • August 8, 2021
    Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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