The Morning Porch

January 27, 2009

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.

Dave Bonta January 26, 2009

Silhouetted against the snow, not one but two rabbits! Winter says: where much is hidden, much is also revealed. Ask the great-horned owls.

Dave Bonta January 25, 2009

The sun glimmers from a shrinking patch of open sky along the horizon. Lake-bottom wrecks, in another minute the icy lid will cover us all.

Dave Bonta January 24, 2009

Treetops sway wildly at first light, squeaking and clattering. A rabbit zigzags across the yard, pausing at each dark patch of bare ground.

Dave Bonta January 23, 2009

A few hours above freezing yesterday, and the snowpack lost its ability to absorb sound. I sit in the dark listening to the roar of trucks.

Dave Bonta January 22, 2009

Fingers of sunlight stretch across the yard. The resident naturalist climbs the trail into the woods with the aid of a long thin stick.

Dave Bonta January 21, 2009

A gray squirrel sits motionless for several minutes on the topmost crook of a fallen limb. Then like a diver it plunges into the snow.

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…