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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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bluebird

March 10, 2012 by Dave Bonta

It’s not my imagination; the bluebird saves his best song for the bluest skies. But this morning, even a passing plane sounds inspired.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, plane 4 Comments
February 21, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, cardinal, sunrise 2 Comments
February 4, 2012 by Dave Bonta

A wool-gray sky. This is not the blue morning we were promised! But tell it to the bluebirds warbling above the garage.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird 2 Comments
March 16, 2016March 12, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise: a bluebird warbles. From a thousand feet up, the cry of a killdeer, that lost shorebird, circling the long brown waves of hills.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, killdeer 7 Comments

Sunrise. A bluebird sings from…

March 4, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. A bluebird sings from the electric line, and suddenly it feels 25 degrees warmer. A ragged V of geese, too low to be migrants.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, Canada geese, sunrise
July 20, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A bluebird warbles in the darkness. Eyelids heavy with hours of missing sleep, I squint into the spreading stain of light.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird
March 16, 2016March 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Bluebird, white-throated sparrow, a starling’s liquid note, and high overhead, a killdeer: the sky must be blue above the fog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, deer, fog, killdeer, starling
February 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, pine siskin, song sparrow, winter wren
February 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A cloudless sunrise. Snow lingers on the west-facing hillside, hard and ugly as guilt. For the first time in months, a bluebird’s song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, sunrise
November 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Cold and overcast. Four silent bluebirds drop into the spicebush in my herb garden and begin gobbling the blood-red drupes, stones and all.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, garden, spicebush
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On This Day

  • December 2, 2024
    Overcast and cold. Ten minutes before sunrise, a yellow rent appears in the clouds. In the distance, the neighbor’s chickens start up a racket.
  • December 2, 2023
    Fog hides the sunrise, apart from a small opening on the ridgetop that fills with golden light. Then the gray curtain comes down again.
  • December 2, 2022
    The frosted meadow glitters in the sun. A scrabbling of squirrel claws on bark. Off to the south, a raven croaks; to the north, crows.
  • December 2, 2021
    It’s damp and warmish. A red-bellied woodpecker comes silently rocketing out of the woods. The creek remains mum about last night’s rain.
  • December 2, 2020
    Raw and wintry, with snow on the ground and an iron wind. I muse on the convergent evolution of “December” and “dismember”.

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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