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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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July 26, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Crystal-clear and cold. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge. A small patch of sun appears among the bracken, making a drought-struck frond twice as yellow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bracken, mourning dove
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On This Day

  • December 5, 2024
    Wind and snow—a fresh two inches on everything. Sun-colored holes open in the gray clouds and swiftly close again. The cold creeps in through my…
  • December 5, 2023
    A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.
  • December 5, 2022
    Cold and still. Dove wings accompany a train whistle. A red sunrise creeps down the western ridge.
  • December 5, 2021
    A vast Sunday-morning silence broken only by mourning dove wings, the soft taps of a downy woodpecker, and the grumbling of my stomach.
  • December 5, 2020
    Patchy gray sky. A red-breasted nuthatch alights on a tulip tree limb stripped bare by a porcupine, a few bast fibers flapping in the wind.

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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