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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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fog

December 9, 2013 by Dave Bonta

After 15 hours of freezing fog, every twig is spiky with eldritch feathers. A squirrel makes a small thunder by running on the crusted snow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, gray squirrel, snow 1 Comment
December 4, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Small birds appear as they fly past, and the sun, too, emerges only to vanish a second later, the fog turning from yellow back to white.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, sunrise 1 Comment
November 17, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Rain and fog. Two bucks stand among the trees, antlers dripping as they lower their heads for a better look at the doe lying in the weeds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, fog, rain
September 29, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Silent as a thief, this sun climbing through the trees. The fog lifted an hour ago, but steam still rises from the yellow leaves.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fall foliage, fog 1 Comment
September 20, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The thin fog turns blue before disappearing. At the woods’ edge, ants rise on filmy wings like a curl of smoke.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ants, fog 3 Comments
February 27, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The snow that began falling at 6:00 has softened to slush; the skunk prints that crossed the garden are gone. Fog fills the woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, skunk, snow
February 11, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A cloud has settled in and delegated to the trees its responsibility to rain. Some restless animal gnaws on a beam under the house.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, rain 4 Comments
January 30, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Dull yellow stripes in the fog: the rising sun slipping between ridge-top trees; thin tulip poplar branches chewed bare by a porcupine.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, porcupine, sunrise, tulip tree 2 Comments
January 29, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Out of the dense fog, the too-fast-to-count taps of a woodpecker drumming for the music of it. He pauses to let a train whistle blow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, red-bellied woodpecker, train 2 Comments
January 13, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Thick fog and a slow dripping of meltwater onto the porch roof. Some of the animal tracks in the yard have melted through—dark portholes.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, snow 2 Comments
December 17, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Thin fog, as in the corners of a tintype. It seems too quiet for a Monday morning; traffic on the interstate is a faint, far moan.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, I-99 1 Comment
December 10, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Pale patches on the upper sides of branches, almost like snow: lichens opening their pores to the rain and fog. My left eyelid twitches.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, lichen, rain 1 Comment
December 8, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and warm with an inversion layer: the clamor of traffic from I-99 and a mist-filled forest. Filmy-winged insects begin to appear.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, I-99, mist 1 Comment
April 15, 2013December 4, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, gray squirrel, hawks, rain, red-tailed hawk
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On This Day

  • February 12, 2025
    The slow fall of small snowflakes never quite stops. A squirrel with a half a tail bounds past, carrying his freshy disinterred breakfast: a black…
  • February 12, 2024
    Overcast and quiet an hour before dawn. From the spruce grove a half mile away, a barred owl’s single Who. The stench of diesel.
  • February 12, 2023
    Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes.
  • February 12, 2022
    Mid-morning. A large cloud over-brimming with golden light serves as ambassador for an advancing army of gray.
  • February 12, 2021
    Overcast and cold. Juncos fight over patches of dirt scraped bare by the snow plow. A chickadee investigates the undersides of branches.

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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