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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Plummer’s Hollow

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
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
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On This Day

  • February 9, 2025
    Two fresh inches of mostly sleet, with its bleak magic of turning from sand to concrete. A titmouse by the springhouse sings his most mechanical…
  • February 9, 2024
    A mottled sky half an hour past sunrise. It’s quiet. The dove who was calling at first light, as if it were March already, must’ve…
  • February 9, 2023
    Nearly an hour past the alleged sunrise, the sky brightens and birds recover their voices, wren and nuthatch synchronizing like some sort of happiness machine.
  • February 9, 2022
    Another clear, cold sunrise urged on by nuthatches and titmice. As the western ridge turns red, a pileated woodpecker chimes in.
  • February 9, 2021
    Fine snow. Cleaning the dust off my glasses, everything blurs together: white sky, white ground, the noise of trains and 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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