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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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American goldfinch

October 26, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Blue sky morning. A goldfinch flock moves down the ridge on its squeaky wheel. I’m not, I realize, an optimist; I’m in love with optimism.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch
June 30, 2008 by Dave Bonta

I realize suddenly that my yard is devoid of bull thistles this year. Could the goldfinches really have consumed every one of the seeds?

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch
June 16, 2008 by Dave Bonta

The clear air makes for sharp contrasts between shadows and patches of sunlight, sewn together by three goldfinches on a high-speed chase.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch
January 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

White ground, gray sky, and the temperature just below freezing. The wind curls around the house like a dog’s tail. A flock of goldfinches.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch
November 14, 2007 by Dave Bonta

White sky, white noise from the highway over the ridge. The goldfinches wake all at once, a querulous babble of squeaky wheels.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, I-99
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On This Day

  • March 20, 2025
    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.…
  • March 20, 2024
    Heavily overcast at mid-morning. I watch a squirrel surveying the yard from atop a stump, then loping over and retrieving a husked walnut from a…
  • March 20, 2023
    Clear and cold. All the while the sunrise seeps down from the treetops, a squirrel files away at a rock-hard black walnut shell to extract…
  • March 20, 2022
    Cold and gloomy—classic March weather for the equinox. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the treetops, underneath which two squirrels chase, oblivious.
  • March 20, 2021
    Equinox. A cowbird’s liquid note. My breath glows in the sunlight as if from the lungs of some gold buddha.

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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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