contrail – The Morning Porch

November 18, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Cold and still. A sky etched with faintly pink contrails. The song sparrows sing in fragments, while the white-throated sparrows merely chirp.

February 19, 2025
Cold, thinly overcast, and very quiet. The spot where the sun must be glows like a yellow door among the ridgetop trees.
February 19, 2024
Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch…
February 19, 2023
It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest.
February 19, 2022
A flash mob of snowflakes rushing this way and that. Over the sound of water, the wind: all hiss, no hush.
February 19, 2021
Four more inches of dry powder. The stream has shrunk to the thinnest black ribbon between white cliffs—a body that refuses to be buried.