deer – Page 14 – The Morning Porch

March 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

March 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

March 16, 2016March 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

March 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

February 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

January 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

December 15, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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.

November 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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

November 26, 2012November 26, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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.

November 12, 2012November 12, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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

October 27, 2008 by Dave Bonta

The oaks are finally coloring up, and rattle instead of rustling in the wind. But no rain of acorns this autumn, few footfalls of deer.

July 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A patch of a deer-tongue grass a mere three feet from my porch—how come I never noticed it before? Am I too busy to watch the grass grow?

July 11, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A high-pitched, terrified bleat. Half a minute later, the alarm snorts of an adult deer. Sun in the treetops. The snorting goes on and on.

May 11, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sunday, and one can hear between bursts of oriole song the creaking of wings, the drone of a bumblebee, a deer snorting a quarter-mile off.