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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

  • February 21, 2025
    Gray skies and a bitter wind. Snowflakes keep finding the open book in my lap; I sweep them off with a glove before they can…
  • February 21, 2024
    Cold and mostly clear at sunrise. Long before the sun clears the ridge, the bright red cardinal is tapping at all my windows.
  • February 21, 2023
    Interval of sun on a rainy morning—the forest shines and steams. The distant yammering of a pileated. The interstate’s whine.
  • February 21, 2022
    Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
  • February 21, 2021
    Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.

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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