Skip to content

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
  • About
  • Subscribe/Follow
  • On This Day
  • Keyword index
  • Links
    • Via Negativa
    • Moving Poems
    • DaveBonta.com
    • Woodrat Photoblog

Dad

December 9, 2012 by Dave Bonta

A flat-gray sky. Train whistles and quarry noise travel up the hollow, accompanying two overlapped umbrellas, one black, one white.

Share on social media

  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Dad, Mom, quarry, rain, train
September 29, 2012 by Dave Bonta

From up behind my parents’ house, some vaguely melodic notes: a blue jay? Or my father whistling as he hangs out the laundry?

Share on social media

  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue jays, Dad

FOLLOW VIA EMAIL

Pick up a free subscription (with options for daily and weekly digests) courtesy of WordPress.com.

Join 278 other subscribers

On This Day

  • January 6, 2025
    The merest shimmer of snow against the dark trees. The shriek of misaligned wheels on a lumbering freight train. One of the neighbor’s hens yelling…
  • January 6, 2024
    Heavy gray clouds, and a breeze from the east: storm coming. Something flushes all the doves from the spring—a euphony of bright notes.
  • January 6, 2023
    A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees.
  • January 6, 2020
    Sun through trees. Where one squirrel has just raced over the snow another squirrel follows, pausing in the same places. The allure of heat.
  • January 6, 2018
    Another brutally cold morning. From somewhere under the house where the heating ducts run, the trilling of a Carolina wren.

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)

Copyleft

Creative Commons License
All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

© 2026 The Morning Porch • Built with GeneratePress