The Morning Porch

5/17/2009

Dave Bonta May 17, 2009

A red-eyed vireo beside the porch with his back to the cold wind, neck feathers buffeted into a crest, singing in the weak sunlight.

Dave Bonta May 16, 2009

A phoebe hovers beside its nest under the springhouse eaves, then lands above it, bug still in beak, tail like a tapping foot: ah, marriage.

Dave Bonta May 15, 2009

Sun through fog. Animals emerge and vanish like actors in a play, bringing their cries and silences: goldfinches, a raven, a pair of deer.

Dave Bonta May 14, 2009 1

A pair of tanagers foraging in the rain. The scarlet male trails the drab female onto a branch two feet from the porch, returning my gaze.

Dave Bonta May 13, 2009

Two male indigo buntings, twice as blue as the sky, clash in the air and land on adjacent branches. One sings, the other flies off.

Dave Bonta May 12, 2009

April’s solitary vireo and brown thrasher have been replaced by red-eyed vireo and catbird—an adagio movement giving way to an allegro.

Dave Bonta May 11, 2009 1

Squabbling squirrels just in from the edge of the woods are almost invisible among the new leaves, except for a gray tail’s flicker.

Dave Bonta May 10, 2009

Backlit by the morning sun: new leaves, the wings of a vulture, my mother’s t-shirts flapping like irreverent prayer flags on the line.

Dave Bonta May 9, 2009

Glimpses of a tanager, a catbird, two goldfinches, and a hummingbird taking a shit. Each tree is still in possession of its own green.

Dave Bonta May 8, 2009

Up half the night watching the moon, I start the day by clearing a dead tree that collapsed onto the road, blocking the meter reader man.

Dave Bonta May 7, 2009 1

I breathe deeply each time the white lilac’s scent wafts across the yard. Behind it, through the half-leafed-out trees, shards of white sky.

Dave Bonta May 6, 2009

The gray winter pelts of two grazing deer are just beginning to fray. The fog withdraws into the woods and the webs of grass spiders.

Dave Bonta May 5, 2009

All these songs I haven’t heard for nine months—it’s like a recurring dream in which birds from the tropics suddenly show up in our woods.

Dave Bonta May 4, 2009

Every morning the green is a little more intense as May turns slowly into Will. Just audible over the rain, some distant motor’s steady hum.