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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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November 24, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Cloudless and still, except for the Amish men with nail guns firing into the roof of my mother’s house. The sun clears the ridge. A saw sinks its teeth into a two-by-four.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags roofers, sunrise
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On This Day

  • January 5, 2025
    Cold with a patchwork sky in which some pink appears and fades. The red squirrel scolds from its hole high in a locust as a…
  • January 5, 2024
    One last glimpse of the crescent moon before it’s swallowed by clouds. The typewriter sound of squirrel claws on bark, chasing. It’s cold.
  • January 5, 2023
    Fifteen minutes after sunrise, the cloud-lid lifts, and a bright seam appears above the horizon. A white-throated sparrow sings two notes and stops.
  • January 5, 2021
    The mockingbird in a bush beside the stream chases off other birds coming in to drink. A squirrel with only half a tail plods over…
  • January 5, 2020
    Snowflakes in the air give shape to the wind. I sneeze, and a pileated woodpecker emerges from the far side of an oak and flies…

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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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