factory whistle – The Morning Porch

January 27, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Is it night or day? The 7 o’clock factory whistle has the answer. Two minutes later, the mockingbird begins to chirp—that take-charge tone.

August 4, 2011 by Dave Bonta

From the paper mill, the mournful note of the Protestant call to work. I watch an enormous horse-fly on the porch ceiling, ready to sprint.

November 13, 2007 by Dave Bonta

Rain drumming on the roof. A single bar of white-throated sparrow song, and then the factory whistle dividing the dawn from the day.

May 22, 2025
Birds still singing in a downpour: scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, Acadian flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher… Fronds of bracken tremble as if readying for flight.
May 22, 2024
The sun finally clears the trees at 9:00. A bluebird and a phoebe call back and forth in the yard, an ovenbird and a red-eyed vireo talk over each other in the woods, and in the valley, traffic, a tractor, a train.
May 22, 2023
A few minutes past sunrise, from the still-deep shadows under the trees, the song of a vagrant Swainson’s thrush, hoarse but ethereal, rising in pitch like a rhetorical question.
May 22, 2022
The humid air is full of insects, filmy wings shining in the sun. In the herb garden, yellow eyes with white lashes: daisy fleabane in bloom.
May 22, 2021
The black cherry blossoms are already fading, and the sun is going from dandelion-yellow to dandelion seedhead-white. Black-billed cuckoo.