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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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bouncing bet

October 6, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Another woods-edge maple has gone red. Bouncing bet still blooms beside the porch, four months on.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bouncing bet, red maple, soapwort
July 24, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Hazy but not yet hot. Hummingbirds circle the soapwort patch, as if following the red threads of bindweed.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bindweed, bouncing bet, ruby-throated hummingbird
July 11, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Sunlight dulled by high haze. A squirrel in the garden grooms its genitals, then pulls a soapwort blossom close for an almost-kiss.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bouncing bet, gray squirrel, soapwort

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On This Day

  • April 5, 2025
    Overcast and quiet, after the drama of a thunderstorm at dawn. The creekside currant bushes have turned intensely green. A hen turkey’s peevish rasp.
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    Dark and overcast at dawn. The creek has subsided—a hubbub rather than a roar. The cardinal who roosts in the red cedar next to the…
  • April 5, 2022
    Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
  • April 5, 2021
    Lust is in the air: a turkey gobbling in the field, a Cooper’s hawk calling in the woods, and right in front of me, a…
  • April 5, 2020
    Again this morning around 10:30, for the fifth day in a row, a Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods. In the hawk’s mind, it…

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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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