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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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box turtle

July 30, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The rain eases off at mid-morning, and once again a box turtle comes out of the woods and marches up the driveway with surprising haste.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags box turtle, rain
July 26, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The box turtle whose territory my house happens to encroach upon sits in the driveway, yellow markings like a road sign in a foreign script.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags box turtle
May 12, 2015 by Dave Bonta

A box turtle plods across the yard, the markings on its shell as bright as fresh graffiti. A bluebird scratches behind his ear like a dog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, box turtle

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On This Day

  • December 24, 2024
    A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting…
  • December 24, 2023
    A few degrees above freezing, heavily overcast, and dead quiet apart from the spring’s low gurgle. A bluebird sings two notes and lapses back into…
  • December 24, 2022
    -2F/-20C. Even under two hats and a beard, the windward side of my face turns numb. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas: bleak…
  • December 24, 2021
    Moonlight fades but the driveway glows even whiter: a new quarter-inch of snow. The sky is clear. Treetop goldfinches start to chatter.
  • December 24, 2020
    White sky and white ground meet in a blur of fog. Above the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s minor-key song.

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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