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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Dave Bonta

January 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Silhouetted against the snow, not one but two rabbits! Winter says: where much is hidden, much is also revealed. Ask the great-horned owls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cottontail
January 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The sun glimmers from a shrinking patch of open sky along the horizon. Lake-bottom wrecks, in another minute the icy lid will cover us all.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Treetops sway wildly at first light, squeaking and clattering. A rabbit zigzags across the yard, pausing at each dark patch of bare ground.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cottontail
January 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A few hours above freezing yesterday, and the snowpack lost its ability to absorb sound. I sit in the dark listening to the roar of trucks.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags trucks
January 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Fingers of sunlight stretch across the yard. The resident naturalist climbs the trail into the woods with the aid of a long thin stick.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Mom
January 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A gray squirrel sits motionless for several minutes on the topmost crook of a fallen limb. Then like a diver it plunges into the snow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel
January 20, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 19, 2009 by Dave Bonta

With each new snowfall the ground grows more uniform, our footprints grow harder to read, and cries die quickly, as in a soundproofed room.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A titmouse lands on a snowy branch and puffs out the white down on its breast. From above the spring, a chickadee’s two-note song: hey ho.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chickadee, tufted titmouse
January 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sparrow tracks in the thin snow under my chair: I see dandelion seeds on the wind. The house shivers all over when the furnace kicks on.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 16, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Clear at sunrise, and so cold the mucous freezes in my nostrils. Trees pop at random intervals. A good day to be a black bear, fast asleep.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bear, sunrise
January 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Leaf-sized shards of snow sail out of the woods. The black cat wallows up to her chest, pausing every few steps to shake one of her legs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 14, 2013January 14, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Bright moonlight, bitter cold. The wind has erased all footprints, and the creaking tree has changed its tune to a dry ah… ah… ah…

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
January 13, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Come crow and save us from a world without shadows, white as a motel towel, a rented room, the coats of orderlies in a home for the insane.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
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On This Day

  • December 8, 2024
    The first sunrise above freezing in weeks. The sun climbs into the palest shade of blue as treetops sway and gyrate in the wind. A…
  • December 8, 2023
    The moon’s bright bowl full of darkness rises through the trees at dawn and vanishes into clouds. Two great-horned owls on the valley side of…
  • December 8, 2022
    A late-morning brightness in the clouds. A white-breasted nuthatch descending a tall black locust turns right-side-up.​
  • December 8, 2021
    Rising late, what have I missed? The sky is white and the air is dead still. There’s no snow. The usual birds are making their…
  • December 8, 2020
    Bright sun, icy breeze. A few flakes zoom past. The only cloud is tiny and dissolves as I watch, leaving the sky to the fourth-quarter…

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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