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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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American crow

May 31, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Gloriously cool and sunny. A doe grazing at the other end of the yard stiffens and cocks her ears at a crow call—a sure sign she has a fawn.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, deer
April 22, 2019 by Dave Bonta

The tall tulip tree has burst its buds—shining green nubbins against the deep blue. Two crows chase a raven, diving, jeering themselves on.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, raven, tulip tree
March 16, 2019 by Dave Bonta

I dreamt I was awoken by the first phoebe of spring. Instead, snowflakes blossom on my coat, and two crows argue back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, snowflakes
March 10, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Crows call through the fog. I open my book to a haiku about crows calling through fog. Having melted a bit, the snow is again a blank page.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, fog, snow
February 17, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Today the icy snowpack can just support my weight. Crows down at the end of the field remind me of Twitter: two’s company, three’s a mob.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, snow
September 12, 2025December 26, 2018 by Dave Bonta

A corvid morning: crow, raven, and jay under a heavy gray sky. The half-cooing, half-scolding sound of gray squirrels in courtship.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, blue jays, gray squirrel, raven
December 8, 2018 by Dave Bonta

In one direction, the waxy chatter of goldfinches; in the other, a mob of crows. I go in before the sun comes out—my legs are too cold.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, American goldfinch
October 2, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Over at the neighbors’, a chainsaw whines and grumbles through a tree, waves of noise rising and falling like the years. A distant crow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, chainsaw 2 Comments
September 28, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Cold and damp. The distant rumble of the heating oil truck’s diesel engine coming up the hollow. Voices of crows. Voices of children.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, trucks
March 12, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Cold and gloomy, but the yard seethes with birds: juncos, cardinals, wren. A hundred yards away, a hawk sits on a limb, bedeviled by crows.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, cardinal, Carolina wren, juncos, red-tailed hawk
February 19, 2018 by Dave Bonta

The fog is a bad magician. Each time it lifts, it reveals the same trees and snow, the same skinny squirrels, the same two crows jeering.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, fog, gray squirrel, snow
February 4, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Fine snow settling over everything. From up in the woods, strange, high-pitched cries. Two crows fly off. The snow thickens.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, snow
January 24, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Winter’s back. You can see it in the dash of snow and thick crust of clouds, hear it in the train’s horn and the querulous cries of crows.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, clouds, snow, train
January 10, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Mackerel clouds above then across the sun like a face consumed by worry lines. The caws of a crow echo off the thawed and refrozen hillside.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, clouds, snow
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On This Day

  • June 11, 2025
    Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
  • June 11, 2024
    Cold and gray. A catbird crosses the yard with a fecal sac from one of its nestlings in its beak. A male ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes the boot soles on my propped-up feet.
  • June 11, 2023
    Rising late, I’m in time to see the last cottontail going back under the house for a mid-morning nap. Cuckoos call in the distance. Common yellowthroat. Wood pewee.
  • June 11, 2022
    Writing on the porch for a while, I am confronted, every time I look up, by three bracken fronds in my yard that have already turned yellow, like needlessly complex skeletons of fish.
  • June 11, 2021
    Overcast and cool. A titmouse appears to have developed a taste for caterpillars, circling the trunk of a walnut like a nuthatch.

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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