The Morning Porch

June 13, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Gray sky. The lilac catbird lands beside the porch to scold me, as if it had just become aware of my presence. Its young must’ve fledged.

June 12, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The sky is pretending to be blue, but I don’t buy it. A hummingbird may land on a dead branch, but that’s the only green it’s going to get.

June 11, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The leaves of a yellow dock plant next to the porch have curled like tongues into makeshift shelters for hundreds of tiny, hungry guests.

June 10, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Six goldfinches flip-flop-fly through the treetops at top speed, twittering nonstop, and swoop with a loop de loop into the lilac.

June 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

In the tall grass beside the road, two yellow iris—last survivors of that phalanx planted 30 years ago, when we still dreamt of order.

June 8, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A yellow jacket inspects the spot where the hornet nest I destroyed last week had hung: traces of gray paper in the shape of a rose.

June 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The cerulean warbler sounds rushed as always. A chipmunk watches me for ten minutes, stationed like a sentry on the rock next to the porch.

May 25, 2024June 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A mosquito lands her drilling rig on my wrist. Warblers whisper in the treetops. The first peony, beaded with rain, bowing to the blue sky.

June 5, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Towhee, robin, catbird, great-crested flycatcher: birdsongs sound more vivid in the rain, like jazz solos rising over a surf of applause.

June 4, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The black cat crouches at the edge of the meadow full of dame’s-rocket. What hides, squirmed into grassy burrows, under all that purple?

June 3, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and still. A soft thump up in the woods must be either a body or a piece of tree well into the slow fever of its afterlife.

June 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A passing shower. In the tall weeds of the old corral, the plaintive yelps of a wild turkey hen trying to keep track of her foraging chicks.

June 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I take advantage of the cold (36F) to destroy a yellow jacket nest above my head, crushing the queen and her paper castle with a sponge mop.

May 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A squirrel running on the roof above my head: the rhythm of hoofbeats in the paintings of horses from when they were still thought to bound.