deer – Page 13 – The Morning Porch

June 22, 2009

Dave Bonta June 22, 2009

Soft applause from the road bank: a doe’s ears flapping as she shakes her head to chase away the flies.

Dave Bonta May 15, 2009

Sun through fog. Animals emerge and vanish like actors in a play, bringing their cries and silences: goldfinches, a raven, a pair of deer.

Dave Bonta May 6, 2009

The gray winter pelts of two grazing deer are just beginning to fray. The fog withdraws into the woods and the webs of grass spiders.

Dave Bonta April 17, 2009

Rattle and rasp from a hole in the eaves where the starlings are moving in. A pair of ravens low over the ridge. The sun’s blazing nest.

Dave Bonta March 31, 2009

Sunny and cold. My mother starts up the trail into the woods with her pant-legs tucked into her socks against the plague of deer ticks.

Dave Bonta March 24, 2009

Another cold, clear morning, with just enough wind to keep my sunlit breath from blocking my view. A killdeer calls from high overhead.

Dave Bonta March 18, 2009

Bluebird, white-throated sparrow, a starling’s liquid note, and high overhead, a killdeer: the sky must be blue above the fog.

Dave Bonta March 15, 2009

Joining the robins, titmice and song sparrow in the dawn chorus: a barred owl. The deer grazing in the yard look up, swiveling their ears.

Dave Bonta February 6, 2009

At dawn, watching one race across open ground from bush to bush, it hits me, why rabbits have been so scarce: the deer ate the briarpatches.

Dave Bonta January 7, 2009

From the other house, the sound of an unfed avian mob. Four goldfinches land in the ice-covered tree in front of me and cock their heads.

Dave Bonta December 15, 2008

Two deer dash down the slope and up into the woods, turn around and dash back. A repeat performance five minutes later ends in a thicket.

Dave Bonta November 28, 2008

An hour before dawn, a deer-shaped shadow drifts out of the woods, apparitional against the snow, like the photographic negative of a ghost.

Dave Bonta November 26, 2008

Enough snow now to make the ground a blank page for the calligraphy of weeds and the meandering tracks of birds, the prints of their wings.

Dave Bonta November 12, 2008

Two white-tailed deer leap through the dried goldenrod and asters beyond the springhouse, surfacing, diving—dolphins in a brown sea.