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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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fog

July 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cool and clear. A pair of bindweed blossoms have opened on a fence post like microwave transmitters. A tiny patch of fog shelters from the sun in the lowest part of the meadow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bindweed, fog
June 19, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Mist rising from the meadow. In the woods, one moss-covered bole of a black birch is illuminated by a random shaft of sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, mist, sunrise 1 Comment
May 26, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The hollow is full of fog with nothing but blue sky above it—a green bowl of birdsong and parts unknown. The sun like a bright spider stretching and retracting her legs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog
May 20, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fog lifts to reveal blue sky, the sun in the treetops. A scarlet tanager hurtles past the porch with a second in close pursuit. The morning’s first itch prickles the back of my hand.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, no-see-ums, scarlet tanager, sunrise
May 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, pileated woodpecker, rain, tufted titmouse, wild turkey
May 6, 2024 by Dave Bonta

A green fog of leaves in fog. A pileated woodpecker’s thunderous drum finds no echo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, pileated woodpecker
May 5, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Gloomy sunrise, with a cloud snagged on the treetops, leaking rain. A titmouse takes advantage of a lull in the chorus to hype his own claim. A tanager’s plucked string.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, rain, scarlet tanager, sunrise, tufted titmouse
April 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fog at dawn, raucous with the calls of a whip-poor-will staking his claim to the woods’ edge, close enough that I can hear him clear his throat.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, fog, whip-poor-will
April 4, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Thick fog brightening in the east. Over the roar of the creek, a phoebe’s small, inexhaustible engine.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, phoebe, stream
April 2, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, fog, rain, stream 1 Comment
March 23, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, gray squirrel, rain
March 6, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Thick fog that lasts for hours. Sunrise must’ve been that big flock of red-winged blackbirds and grackles crackling and creaking like old doors.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags common grackle, fog, red-winged blackbird
February 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fog full of birdsong. I look up from the page to a rumble of thunder that makes the windows shake.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, thunder
February 23, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all along the edge of the woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black birch, dawn, fog, lichen
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On This Day

  • April 24, 2025
    Clear and cool at sunrise, with ovenbirds calling in the woods and a red-winged blackbird in the meadow. Two squirrels climb high into the canopy…
  • April 24, 2024
    Waiting for the rising sun to emerge from the clouds, I read half a book. The sky is a crazy quilt, orange and gray and…
  • April 24, 2023
    Three degrees below freezing, but no frost. The dawn chorus seems reduced in volume, though the towhees and one tom turkey aren’t holding back.
  • April 24, 2022
    Cool beginning of a day forecast to be hot. The high, thin whistles of waxwings. A fantastically dissonant freight train horn.
  • April 24, 2021
    The wings of insects shining in the sun where snowflakes flew two days ago. The Cooper’s hawk sounds as gung-ho as ever. I sharpen a…

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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