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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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June 7, 2025

Dave Bonta June 7, 2025 0

Rain at sunrise. A flower longhorn beetle takes refuge under the porch, landing beside my mug. The crash of a falling limb.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged longhorn beetles, rain

June 6, 2025

Dave Bonta June 6, 2025 0

Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cerulean warbler, fog, periodical cicadas, sunrise, wood thrush

June 5, 2025

Dave Bonta June 5, 2025 0

Cool and humid. A phoebe dives for an insect and gives it to a fledgling sitting on a walnut branch. In the shadows of the trees, white masses of mountain laurel blossoms.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged mountain laurel, phoebe

June 4, 2025

Dave Bonta June 4, 2025 0

Another cool, cloudless morning. The springhouse tulip tree is in bloom, looking more like a lotus tree: fat yellow flowers seemingly taken from a lake and lifted high into the blue.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged springhouse, tulip tree

June 3, 2025

Dave Bonta June 3, 2025 0

A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged American goldfinch, clouds, sunrise, wild turkey

June 2, 2025

Dave Bonta June 2, 2025 0

Cold and crystal-clear, before the high-altitude smog from the burning forests of Canada shows up. On the end of a walnut limb, chipping sparrows are mating and foraging with their usual enthusiasm.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged chipping sparrow, clouds

June 1, 2025

Dave Bonta June 1, 2025 0

Clear, still, and unseasonably cold. A yellow-billed cuckoo calls, though not especially loudly, so perhaps the jury is still out on whether ‘sumer is icumen in’ or not.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged yellow-billed cuckoo

May 31, 2025

Dave Bonta May 31, 2025 0

Sun through thin clouds and a cold breeze. A hummingbird buzzes in and circles the spot where a hummingbird feeder last hung four years ago.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged clouds, ruby-throated hummingbird, wind

May 30, 2025

Dave Bonta May 30, 2025 0

A few clouds disappearing into deep blue on a morning so clear, I feel even I could do the gnatcatcher’s job and find each drifting speck of nutriment.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged blue-gray gnatcatcher, clouds

May 29, 2025

Dave Bonta May 29, 2025 0

The rain has stopped, but everything drips. In the splay of dying daffodil leaves below the porch, glowing white dewberry blossoms.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged daffodils, dewberries, rain

May 28, 2025

Dave Bonta May 28, 2025 0

Cold rain. The wind from a distant storm stirs the bright green, half-grown walnut leaves, moving on into the darker greens of the forest.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black walnut, rain, wind

May 27, 2025

Dave Bonta May 27, 2025 0

Overcast and cool. As the wood thrush fades in the distance, the brown thrasher parodies his song. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. The sun almost comes out.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged brown thrasher, cedar waxwings, clouds, wood thrush

May 26, 2025

Dave Bonta May 26, 2025 0

Georgeous and cool. I stay out until the sun clears the trees, letting the birdsong and the poems I’m reading intermingle in my ear: stanza after stanza of red-eyed vireo, tanager enjambment, the redstart’s end-stopped line.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged American redstart, red-eyed vireo, scarlet tanager

May 25, 2025

Dave Bonta May 25, 2025 0

A cold wind with thin clouds admitting a semblance of sunlight. The red-eyed vireo recites his refrain as doggedly as ever, not to be outdone by a downy woodpecker’s fast fills.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged clouds, downy woodpecker, red-eyed vireo, wind

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On This Day

  • June 21, 2024
    A hazy sunrise for the first full day of astronomical summer. The feral garlics are raising crane’s-bill heads.
  • June 21, 2023
    The sun rising through high-altitude murk isn’t much brighter than the goldfinches chattering in the treetops, less than three hours till the solstice.
  • June 21, 2022
    One gray squirrel shadows another, nose to tail, down the gray driveway. Mid-morning thunder. A patter of rain.
  • June 21, 2021
    Hot and humid. A silver-spotted skipper draws my eye to a bindweed trumpet, its silent hosannas seemingly aimed at the ancient rose bush.
  • June 21, 2020
    A butterfly’s erratic flight-path is the main thing distinguishing it from the odd falling leaf in this humid air saturated with birdsong.

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.

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Detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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