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

eastern cottontail

November 9, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, eastern cottontail, fog, white-breasted nuthatch
January 28, 2025 by Dave Bonta

In the half-dark of dawn, the white noise of wind is made literal by flocks of snowflakes swirling this way and that. Rabbit tracks go under the house and do not reemerge.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, eastern cottontail, snow, snowflakes, wind
June 11, 2023 by Dave Bonta

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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags common yellowthroat, eastern cottontail, eastern wood pewee, yellow-billed cuckoo

FOLLOW VIA EMAIL

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

Join 125 other subscribers

On This Day

  • October 5, 2025
    Clear and very quiet at dawn. Some scattered towhee tweets. The thump of a walnut dropped by a half-awake squirrel.
  • October 5, 2024
    Before dawn, before the nearby quarry starts up, you can almost hear the stars glittering. In a dark enough sky, it turns out that Orion has a whole nest of stars for a head.
  • October 5, 2023
    Half an hour past sunrise and the birds are quiet. All along the woods’ edge, yellow leaves are falling by ones and twos. The smell of burning plastic.
  • October 5, 2021
    Sunrise hidden by fog, which only turns a lighter shade of gray. Rain falling from the leaves. Leaves falling from the rain.
  • October 5, 2020
    Low cloud ceiling. Three flocks of resident Canada geese go over the house, one after another, in formations as disorderly as their cries.

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