The Morning Porch

3/5/2009

Dave Bonta March 5, 2009

A downy woodpecker plays a dead locust limb like a marimba, moving rapidly from pitch to pitch, a tremor of red against the blue sky.

Dave Bonta March 4, 2009

Right after a mourning dove’s song, a screech owl trills at the very same pitch. The sun floats free of the horizon and into the bluest sky.

Dave Bonta March 3, 2009

Cold air, bright sun. Snow-motes drift down from a cloudless sky. A mourning dove’s song. Dad calls to tell me Mom’s having dizzy spells.

Dave Bonta March 2, 2009

A groundhog emerges from the culvert and rears up to survey a route to the next female’s burrow. His head swivels, following a noisy crow.

Dave Bonta March 1, 2009

Just two, isolated caks in half an hour, but I’m almost certain it’s a Cooper’s hawk turning over his rusty courtship motor. Happy March!

Dave Bonta February 28, 2009

The local geese seem restless, flying from valley to valley as if trying to remember how to migrate. Four juncos in the road gathering grit.

Dave Bonta February 27, 2009

A downpour. Just above the ridge, a sudden flash followed by a teeth-rattling rumble, the outline of an inverted tree fading on my retina.

Dave Bonta February 26, 2009

I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.

Dave Bonta February 25, 2009

With the sun on my face I turn my eyes into camera lenses, open, shut: half-second negatives of trees, bushes, railing. Remember this.

Dave Bonta February 24, 2009

Cloudless and cold at sunrise. Two titmice drone back and forth, like a pair of insurance agents at a party trying to out-bore each other.

Dave Bonta February 23, 2009

Sun shining through thin clouds and wind-blown snow. A great wave of happiness sweeps past. In the barberry bush, a cardinal begins to sing.

Dave Bonta February 22, 2009

White sky. The soft calls of a pair of downy woodpeckers on adjacent trees. Four chickadees on a high-speed chase tear through the lilac.

Dave Bonta February 21, 2009

A section of latticework below the porch floor has fallen off, and though it kept nothing out, I feel strangely vulnerable. A red sunrise.

Dave Bonta February 20, 2009

Bitter cold. A loud creaking from the edge of the woods, as if from an unlatched door swinging in the wind. Snow cover thin as a ghost.