Skip to content

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
  • About
  • Subscribe/Follow
  • On This Day
  • Keyword index
  • Links
    • Via Negativa
    • Moving Poems
    • DaveBonta.com
    • Woodrat Photoblog

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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags banjo, stream, winter wren

FOLLOW VIA EMAIL

Pick up a free subscription (with options for daily and weekly digests) courtesy of WordPress.com.

Join 115 other subscribers

On This Day

  • August 9, 2025
    Clear and cold at dawn. The nearly full moon gutters among the trees. A screech owl trills with a rising intonation, which feels like some kind of omen.
  • August 9, 2024
    Steady rain with a bit of a breeze—the remains of a hurricane that got the wind knocked out of her and lost her eye. At 7:39 the Carolina wren finally pipes up.
  • August 9, 2023
    Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
  • August 9, 2021
    Sunny and humid. The electric whine of annual cicadas ebbs and flows. A hummingbird flies into the forest’s wall of leaves at top speed.
  • August 9, 2015
    Workmen up at the other house: the whine of an annual cicada in the trees alternates with an actual electric saw.

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)

Copyleft

Creative Commons License
All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

© 2026 The Morning Porch • Built with GeneratePress