Skip to content

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
  • About
  • Subscribe/Follow
  • On This Day
  • Keyword index
  • Links
    • Via Negativa
    • Moving Poems
    • DaveBonta.com
    • Woodrat Photoblog
August 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Crystal-clear and cool at mid-morning, the Sunday silence only broken by a chipmunk’s metronome and the distant rumble of a train. In a patch of sun, a cricket picks up where he left off.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, crickets, train
Previous Post
Next Post

FOLLOW VIA EMAIL

Pick up a free subscription (with options for daily and weekly digests) courtesy of WordPress.com.

Join 117 other subscribers

On This Day

  • July 14, 2025
    Fog lingering into mid-morning. The sprawling lilac at the far edge of the yard is now more than half-brown with leaf-spot disease, brought on by this endless rainy season. The mullein stalk still follows its yellow flowers into the sky.
  • July 14, 2024
    In the early morning coolness, a soft thunder of deer hooves up in the woods. From overhead, the calls of purple martins already on the wing.
  • July 14, 2023
    The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
  • July 14, 2022
    Partly cloudy and cool. A large garter snake emerges from the stone wall and curls up on a sunny corner of the porch.
  • July 14, 2021
    Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.

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)

Copyleft

Creative Commons License
All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

© 2026 The Morning Porch • Built with GeneratePress