The Morning Porch

May 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I breathe deeply each time the white lilac’s scent wafts across the yard. Behind it, through the half-leafed-out trees, shards of white sky.

May 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The gray winter pelts of two grazing deer are just beginning to fray. The fog withdraws into the woods and the webs of grass spiders.

May 5, 2009 by Dave Bonta

All these songs I haven’t heard for nine months—it’s like a recurring dream in which birds from the tropics suddenly show up in our woods.

May 4, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Every morning the green is a little more intense as May turns slowly into Will. Just audible over the rain, some distant motor’s steady hum.

May 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Male and female cardinal meet beak-to-beak in the middle of the driveway. He sings, she gives him a seed or bit of grit, and they fly off.

May 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Warm rain. The wood thrushes have returned to sing at the edge of the woods for another year. It’s almost possible to believe in redemption.

April 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

When I stop to admire the red columbine in my garden, a female cardinal bursts from the cedar tree, her half-built nest inches from my ear.

April 29, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Does the cottontail rabbit remember winter when the bridal wreath bush it uses for cover again turns white?

April 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sandals and shirtsleeves. The thin song of a black-throated green warbler. The oaks are blooming, and the air is full of insects.

April 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

An inversion layer brings traffic noise into the dawn chorus. Large gnats land on my arm. A squirrel sits on the head of the concrete dog.

Sunrise. A white moth and a white…

April 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. A white moth and a white butterfly flit between the cherry blossoms, and at the edge of the woods, the shadblow is in full bloom.

April 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Kitchen: wolf spider. Bathroom: silverfish. Dining room: millipede. And right above me on the porch, a gnatcatcher lands and sings.

April 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The bottom half of the porcupine-girdled cherry tree is in bloom; the top is lifeless. You’d think the news would travel from the ground up.

April 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A moment of sunlight illuminates the yard. Water seeps from the mountain’s every pore. The starling is doing its best to talk like a duck.