The Morning Porch

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.

May 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A chipmunk appears on the flat stone beside the porch and stares at me as I hum Shostokovich, its cheeks bulged wide as Dizzy Gillespie’s.

May 29, 2009 by Dave Bonta

After decades of segregation by color, the irises in my garden seem to have interbred: beside the porch, yellow petals with purple wings.

May 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Pale bones of the dead elm, standing at the edge of the yard like an emissary from Lent amidst a Mardi Gras of green, reach into fog.