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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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December 1, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Warm and overcast. It’s the first day of deer season, and the silence seems charged. The sun appears for three seconds. A blue jay calls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue jays, hunters
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On This Day

  • January 22, 2025
    Two below zero, and at least two gray squirrels are in heat now. I watch a suitor bound over the snow and into the trees,…
  • January 22, 2024
    Between moonset and dawn, a dark hour filled with the sound of freight trains. I hold my head still to watch Venus slip through the…
  • January 22, 2023
    Sky the color of faded jeans. It’s cold. The crash of a dead limb falling from the treetops where two female squirrels are eluding suitors.
  • January 22, 2022
    The coldest morning of the year so far. Every few minutes, a tree with ice in its heartwood cracks like a gunshot. The ridge turns…
  • January 22, 2021
    Half an hour before sunrise, the first inquisitive chirps: mockingbird. A snow-free caesura in the road where the spring flows under it.

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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