The Morning Porch

January 20, 2009

Dave Bonta January 20, 2009

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon.

Dave Bonta January 19, 2009

With each new snowfall the ground grows more uniform, our footprints grow harder to read, and cries die quickly, as in a soundproofed room.

Dave Bonta January 18, 2009

A titmouse lands on a snowy branch and puffs out the white down on its breast. From above the spring, a chickadee’s two-note song: hey ho.

Dave Bonta January 17, 2009

Sparrow tracks in the thin snow under my chair: I see dandelion seeds on the wind. The house shivers all over when the furnace kicks on.

Dave Bonta January 16, 2009

Clear at sunrise, and so cold the mucous freezes in my nostrils. Trees pop at random intervals. A good day to be a black bear, fast asleep.

Dave Bonta January 15, 2009

Leaf-sized shards of snow sail out of the woods. The black cat wallows up to her chest, pausing every few steps to shake one of her legs.

Dave Bonta January 14, 2009

Bright moonlight, bitter cold. The wind has erased all footprints, and the creaking tree has changed its tune to a dry ah… ah… ah…

Dave Bonta January 13, 2009

Come crow and save us from a world without shadows, white as a motel towel, a rented room, the coats of orderlies in a home for the insane.

Dave Bonta January 12, 2009

The moon comes out, and there’s the rabbit, crouching next to the lilac. It races across the driveway and disappears into the cattails.

Dave Bonta January 11, 2009

Spots of blood in the snow at the woods’ edge. An odd, foot-long circumflex hangs in the top branches of the lilac like a snowy mustache.

Dave Bonta January 10, 2009

Falling snow so fine it lends little more than a shimmer to the air, like heat waves above a summer street except for the downward drift.

Dave Bonta January 9, 2009

At first light, a rare glimpse of a rabbit below the porch. I can hear the ice shattering as it chews on a clump of dead brome grass.

Dave Bonta January 8, 2009

A skim of snow on the ice: dangerous magic. Branches rattle in the wind, and there’s a new, nearly constant creak. The white sky brightens.

Dave Bonta January 7, 2009

From the other house, the sound of an unfed avian mob. Four goldfinches land in the ice-covered tree in front of me and cock their heads.