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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Dave Bonta

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
April 21, 2013April 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Crows mobbing an owl, the sun breaking through clouds, a field sparrow’s cup filling to the brim… April is still an unknown country to me.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags field sparrow
April 20, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Hard rain with a bit of wind. But dreariness is impossible with so many variations on yellow: spicebush, forsythia, daffodils, pussy willow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags daffodils, forsythia, pussy willow, spicebush
April 19, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Gray sky. Distant drumming of a grouse—so faint, it could be the mountain’s own heartbeat. A rabbit in the lilac scratches behind its ear.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cottontail, lilac, ruffed grouse
April 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

First morning without long johns: my legs feel like orphans in their tunnels of denim. The air is full of gnats and the gobbling of turkeys.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
April 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Rattle and rasp from a hole in the eaves where the starlings are moving in. A pair of ravens low over the ridge. The sun’s blazing nest.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, raven, starling
April 16, 2009 by Dave Bonta

An orange tabby appears at the side of the porch, and we stare at each other with alarm. Sun spreads through the treetops like an epidemic.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
April 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Another cold and rainy morning. A white spot up in the woods is nothing but foam on a black birch trunk. How long until the shadbush bloom?

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
April 14, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Beside the rosette of mullein leaves like thumbless felt mittens beaded with rainwater, the feral cat pauses to yowl.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cats, mullein
April 13, 2009 by Dave Bonta

White sky, weak sun, a hollow knocking from the quarry. A winter wren holds forth below the old corrall, rambling, introspective.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags winter wren
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On This Day

  • March 22, 2025
    Patches of blue, and a pair of hawks arrowing north silhouetted against the clouds. An inversion layer brings traffic noise from over the ridge, but…
  • March 22, 2024
    Cold and still. The rising sun shines straight down the old woods road to illuminate the whitewashed springhouse, just three days past the equinox.
  • March 22, 2023
    Cold and gray. Up in the corner of the field, a tom turkey raises and lowers the dark banner of his tail, gobbling at his…
  • March 22, 2022
    Weak sun through thickening clouds. A robin and his echo. The metallic taps of a titmouse opening a sunflower seed against a drainpipe.
  • March 22, 2021
    Sunrise. I watch the trees grow shadows and pelts of sunlight. Anyone rooted can become a gnomon: from the Greek, an expert or interpreter.

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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