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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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Dave Bonta

May 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The gray winter pelts of two grazing deer are just beginning to fray. The fog withdraws into the woods and the webs of grass spiders.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, fog
May 5, 2009 by Dave Bonta

All these songs I haven’t heard for nine months—it’s like a recurring dream in which birds from the tropics suddenly show up in our woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
May 4, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Every morning the green is a little more intense as May turns slowly into Will. Just audible over the rain, some distant motor’s steady hum.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
May 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Male and female cardinal meet beak-to-beak in the middle of the driveway. He sings, she gives him a seed or bit of grit, and they fly off.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cardinal
May 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Warm rain. The wood thrushes have returned to sing at the edge of the woods for another year. It’s almost possible to believe in redemption.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wood thrush
April 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

When I stop to admire the red columbine in my garden, a female cardinal bursts from the cedar tree, her half-built nest inches from my ear.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cardinal, garden
April 29, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Does the cottontail rabbit remember winter when the bridal wreath bush it uses for cover again turns white?

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bridal wreath, cottontail
April 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sandals and shirtsleeves. The thin song of a black-throated green warbler. The oaks are blooming, and the air is full of insects.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-throated green warbler, wood thrush
April 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

An inversion layer brings traffic noise into the dawn chorus. Large gnats land on my arm. A squirrel sits on the head of the concrete dog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel

Sunrise. A white moth and a white…

April 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. A white moth and a white butterfly flit between the cherry blossoms, and at the edge of the woods, the shadblow is in full bloom.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags moths, sunrise
April 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Kitchen: wolf spider. Bathroom: silverfish. Dining room: millipede. And right above me on the porch, a gnatcatcher lands and sings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gnatcatcher, millipede, silverfish, spiders
April 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The bottom half of the porcupine-girdled cherry tree is in bloom; the top is lifeless. You’d think the news would travel from the ground up.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cherry tree, porcupine
April 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A moment of sunlight illuminates the yard. Water seeps from the mountain’s every pore. The starling is doing its best to talk like a duck.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags starling
April 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Another cold morning. During a pause in the robin’s song, I can hear the spring peepers’ tireless ME ME ME ME ME down in the marsh.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, spring peeper
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On This Day

  • December 22, 2024
    Very cold and still. Over by the springhouse, juncos are making their happy sounds. A mourning dove moans.
  • December 22, 2023
    Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
  • December 22, 2021
    Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.
  • December 22, 2020
    After a night of light rain, the snowpack has shrunk, revealing a microtopography of logs, pits and mounds—bones under the skin of an elder.
  • December 22, 2019
    Bright sun with a bit of warmth, but the trees’ long shadows give shelter to the snow. A squirrel leaps headlong through the treetops.

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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