The Morning Porch

February 9, 2009

Dave Bonta February 9, 2009

A cloudless sunrise. Snow lingers on the west-facing hillside, hard and ugly as guilt. For the first time in months, a bluebird’s song.

Dave Bonta February 8, 2009

Warm and windy. I’ve been staring at the same dim star for five minutes now. The roaring on the ridge drowns out every other sound.

Dave Bonta February 7, 2009

Titmouse, screech owl, pileated: three ways to ululate. Orange-bellied clouds below the eaves which are festooned with dangleberries of ice.

Dave Bonta February 6, 2009

At dawn, watching one race across open ground from bush to bush, it hits me, why rabbits have been so scarce: the deer ate the briarpatches.

Dave Bonta February 5, 2009

1°F. A breeze feels as sharp as the studded rim of the sun rising through the trees. The call of a cardinal like an engine trying to start.

Dave Bonta February 4, 2009

At first light, some large animal crunching through the snowpack at the woods’ edge. It slows, stops. I wait for daybreak: nothing there.

Dave Bonta February 3, 2009

At half-light, small explosions of wings and twittering from around the side of the house as birds leave their roosts in the cedar tree.

Dave Bonta February 2, 2009

Tracks left yesterday morning have grown blurry and distended. Every weed and grass stem is a bull’s-eye at the center of a pit.

Dave Bonta February 1, 2009

Clear at sunrise. The squeaks of courting squirrels are almost indistinguishable from the squeaks of the trees, rocking in the warm wind.

Dave Bonta January 31, 2009

I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels: Go! Go! Go! It occurs to me that snow is the opposite of water, slippery when dry.

Dave Bonta January 30, 2009

In the pre-dawn darkness, the wall of trees is in motion, like a silent waterfall. I’m either having an acid flashback, or it’s snowing.

Dave Bonta January 29, 2009

A dozen doves take flight all at once—a confusion of flutes. From the almost-finished house a quarter mile away, the scream of a power saw.

Dave Bonta January 28, 2009

Like sand in an hourglass this pellet snow. Three craters in the yard—grass, leaves—from something that’s trying to turn back the clock.

Dave Bonta January 27, 2009

The promised snowstorm has yet to arrive. The air is dead still, and an hour after daybreak, the ground remains lighter than the sky.