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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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banjo

September 12, 2025August 6, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A wood pewee snaps an insect out of the air, lands and sings, his mournful notes the only thing audible over my uncle’s banjo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags banjo, eastern wood pewee 1 Comment
January 31, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Walking naked through the cold house at dawn, I’m startled by a bright light among the trees on the western ridge: the moon, big as a banjo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags banjo, moon 2 Comments
October 15, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A winter wren’s wandering burble from above the dry creek. A visitor brings out his old-time banjo and tunes it with an electronic tuner.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags banjo, stream, winter wren

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On This Day

  • March 9, 2025
    Clear and still, despite the madness of clocks losing an hour. Woodpecker drums. A squirrel rummaging through last year’s leaves.
  • March 9, 2024
    Rain and robin song. The sky darkens. The black birches look dapper in their gray-green suits of lichen.
  • March 9, 2023
    Crystal clear and quiet from moonset to sunrise and beyond. The sine wave of a pileated woodpecker’s flight through the trees, each widely spaced flap…
  • March 9, 2022
    Snow. I’m just in time to watch the ground disappear. The woods’ edge slowly reverts to winter calligraphy: broad brushstrokes of white ink.
  • March 9, 2021
    Almost warm, and the sky almost clear. Two chipmunks sit two feet apart on top of the wall, staring off in different directions.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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