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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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beetles

August 31, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Humid, overcast and cool. I study the flamboyant gestures of certain meadow plants already more than half-way dead. A fat beetle flies past.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles
July 24, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, black walnut, netwing beetle, wood thrush
May 16, 2020 by Dave Bonta

A brown thrasher’s jazz echoes off the barn. In the clear plastic hummingbird feeder, a lampyrid beetle takes a very long time to drown.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, brown thrasher
July 16, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A rabbit trots up the road, rounds the bend and continues past the house like the bearer of urgent news. A beetle with red elytra sails by.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, cottontail
August 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Between showers, a shallow, orange V careens through the cherry’s dead limbs. Mating craneflies? No, a large beetle with orange elytra.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, cherry tree

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On This Day

  • June 18, 2025
    Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
  • June 18, 2024
    Everything still drips from last night’s storm. I abandon the porch for a quick hike before the heat.
  • June 18, 2023
    The light is still murky and cool at mid-morning as lulls in the avian chorus lengthen. The breeze riffling through walnut leaves. A cowbird’s liquid note.
  • June 18, 2022
    Windy and cool. The pale undersides of leaves turning in unison like shoals of fish. A robin and a tanager trading off.
  • June 18, 2021
    High, hazy clouds dilute the sunlight. A chipping sparrow lands sideways on a tall dame’s-rocket stalk, singing as it bows under his weight.

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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