The Morning Porch

6/12/2009

Dave Bonta June 12, 2009

The sky is pretending to be blue, but I don’t buy it. A hummingbird may land on a dead branch, but that’s the only green it’s going to get.

Dave Bonta June 11, 2009

The leaves of a yellow dock plant next to the porch have curled like tongues into makeshift shelters for hundreds of tiny, hungry guests.

Dave Bonta June 10, 2009

Six goldfinches flip-flop-fly through the treetops at top speed, twittering nonstop, and swoop with a loop de loop into the lilac.

Dave Bonta June 9, 2009

In the tall grass beside the road, two yellow iris—last survivors of that phalanx planted 30 years ago, when we still dreamt of order.

Dave Bonta June 8, 2009

A yellow jacket inspects the spot where the hornet nest I destroyed last week had hung: traces of gray paper in the shape of a rose.

Dave Bonta June 7, 2009

The cerulean warbler sounds rushed as always. A chipmunk watches me for ten minutes, stationed like a sentry on the rock next to the porch.

Dave Bonta June 6, 2009

A mosquito lands her drilling rig on my wrist. Warblers whisper in the treetops. The first peony, beaded with rain, bowing to the blue sky.

Dave Bonta June 5, 2009

Towhee, robin, catbird, great-crested flycatcher: birdsongs sound more vivid in the rain, like jazz solos rising over a surf of applause.

Dave Bonta June 4, 2009

The black cat crouches at the edge of the meadow full of dame’s-rocket. What hides, squirmed into grassy burrows, under all that purple?

Dave Bonta June 3, 2009

Overcast and still. A soft thump up in the woods must be either a body or a piece of tree well into the slow fever of its afterlife.

Dave Bonta June 2, 2009

A passing shower. In the tall weeds of the old corral, the plaintive yelps of a wild turkey hen trying to keep track of her foraging chicks.

Dave Bonta June 1, 2009

I take advantage of the cold (36F) to destroy a yellow jacket nest above my head, crushing the queen and her paper castle with a sponge mop.

Dave Bonta May 31, 2009 1

A squirrel running on the roof above my head: the rhythm of hoofbeats in the paintings of horses from when they were still thought to bound.

Dave Bonta May 30, 2009

A chipmunk appears on the flat stone beside the porch and stares at me as I hum Shostokovich, its cheeks bulged wide as Dizzy Gillespie’s.