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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

  • November 14, 2025
    Frosty and still at dawn. A hunter’s flashlight ascends a ridgetop tree and goes out, subsumed by the crescent moon’s open parenthesis.
  • November 14, 2024
    Heavily overcast without a breath of wind—classic November weather. A small carnival of goldfinches moves through the treetops on squeaky wheels.
  • November 14, 2023
    Sunrise hidden by a layer of cloud. A white-footed mouse explores the corrugated roof over my oil tanks, its likely sickness shown by its lack of fear.
  • November 14, 2022
    Heavy cloud cover. A gray squirrel chiseling open a walnut squats on a low branch with its tail curled over its head for warmth.
  • November 14, 2021
    A blank gray sky, this time of year, is the easiest kind to read: snow, it says, in a slowly accelerating tumble of pure punctuation.

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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