The Morning Porch

November 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Frosty and still at dawn. A hunter’s flashlight ascends a ridgetop tree and goes out, subsumed by the crescent moon’s open parenthesis.

December 4, 2024
After an orange sunrise, in the ordinary light of an overcast morning, the mechanical tapping of a downy woodpecker, the slow wingbeats of a raven.
December 4, 2023
A mottled gray sky all the way to the horizon, not brightening even for the sunrise, let alone for the crows with their many complaints…
December 4, 2022
Still haunted by dreams I can’t remember when the sun clears the ridge and sets the clouds of my breath aglow.
December 4, 2021
Clear except for two contrails, fuzzy with age. Another scrap of gray paper has fallen from the old hornets’ nest, its lines blank as ever.
December 4, 2020
The snow has shrunk to a few spots the low sun doesn’t reach. In the herb bed, the only white is a pile of clippings…