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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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equinox

March 20, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Equinox. I make it out onto the porch just as the sun peeks over the ridge. Phoebes are calling. From the top of a walnut tree, the brown-headed cowbird’s liquid lisp.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, cowbird, equinox, phoebe, spring equinox, sunrise Leave a comment
March 20, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Thin, high clouds—enough to blur the edges of shadows. Whenever the robin pauses for breath, I can hear a phoebe calling up by the barn. Spring is here.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, clouds, equinox, phoebe
March 20, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Cold and gloomy—classic March weather for the equinox. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the treetops, underneath which two squirrels chase, oblivious.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Cooper's hawk, equinox, gray squirrel
September 22, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Equinox. I spot some goldenrod, done flowering, turning yellow a second time. My mother stops by to tell me about a singing porcupine.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags equinox, goldenrod, porcupine
May 25, 2024September 22, 2018 by Dave Bonta

White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, crickets, equinox, quaking aspen

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On This Day

  • April 6, 2025
    Damp gloom suffused with white-throated sparrow song, high and thin and tremulous, amid bright splashes of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush.
  • April 6, 2024
    A spit of rain in my face at sunrise, despite the lack of clouds—classic April. It’s cold. The miniature daffodils have been blooming for a…
  • April 6, 2023
    First morning back after vacation, the setting moon is somehow already full. A fox sparrow sings beside the old springhouse. Up in the woods, the…
  • April 6, 2022
    The rain that woke me in the night with its drumming dwindles to mizzle. Swelling buds and arboreal lichens glow in the gray-brown woods.
  • April 6, 2021
    Overcast and still. A field sparrow’s accelerating note. A turkey hunter and his wife, led by their dog, carry a tree stand into the woods.

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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