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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Plummer’s Hollow

July 3, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A low, leaden sky. Leaves blow backwards. A robin on a dead branch at the edge of the yard turns to face the woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin
July 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sitting in great discomfort due to a sprained back, I regard a deer-stripped black raspberry cane, naked except for its thorns.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer
July 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Everything drips; I don’t notice that the rain has stopped until the sun comes out. A burst of song from phoebe, catbird and Carolina wren.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, catbird, phoebe
June 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Just inside the woods’ edge, three mushrooms weather the downpour, umbrellas for no one. The soaked bark of a maple turns patchy blue.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow 1 Comment
June 29, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Wood thrush, when you go back to Honduras, don’t just forage in the campo. Sing like you do here. Let them know how we mourn.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wood thrush
June 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The pasture rose in front of my wall bears two white blossoms: bindweed raising its flared trumpets to the white sky. The smell of rain.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bindweed, catbird, pasture rose
June 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The red climbing rose is just coming into bloom, but it’s the garlic tops I’m admiring, those coiled green snakes with the heads of birds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
June 26, 2021June 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Bright sunshine after a night of thunderstorms. Four deer—two does and two fawns—run through the steaming woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer
June 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Beside the springhouse, the twittering zoom of a hummingbird’s courtship dive: from sunlight into cattail shadows and back. Tanager song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cattails, ruby-throated hummingbird, scarlet tanager, springhouse
June 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Another cloudless, cool morning. Two large craneflies joined back-to-back like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu float sedately past.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cranefly
June 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The catbird sails in and out of the lilac without interrupting his stream of song. Oak leaves glossy as mirrors; the sky so blue it hurts.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags catbird, lilac, stream, tufted titmouse
June 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Soft applause from the road bank: a doe’s ears flapping as she shakes her head to chase away the flies.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, deerflies, springhouse
June 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Up early enough to catch the end of the shortest night of the year, alive with wind and gurgling water, fireflies, a lone spring peeper.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, spring peeper
June 20, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A hummingbird grooms itself in the middle of a downpour while a phoebe plucks insects from the side of the dead elm, hovering in place.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags phoebe, ruby-throated hummingbird
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On This Day

  • January 21, 2025
    Zero at dawn, and very quiet. Finally a nuthatch pipes up, followed by a junco. From inside the tall locust tree behind the springhouse, the…
  • January 21, 2024
    I’m grateful to the snowflakes for mostly not landing on the pages of my book and sailing on by. Am I fully acclimated to the…
  • January 21, 2023
    Gray sky, and the ground scrofulous with snow—an eighth of an inch. A sudden cacophony of mourning dove wings.
  • January 21, 2022
    Clear and cold: -16C/3F. Two white-breasted nuthatches exchange notes. The smoke from my chimney slinks along the ground toward the south.
  • January 21, 2021
    The first stripe of sunlight to make it through the woods follows the 200-year-old colliers’ trail. In thin snow, the cuneiform of sparrows.

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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