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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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gray squirrel

January 5, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Three mourning doves disturbed by a foraging squirrel take flight. Like fast notes blown on a shakuhachi, the whistling of their wings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, mourning doves 3 Comments
December 28, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A squirrel tumbles out of the big maple and catches itself in the top of a locust sapling, tail wrapping around the branch like a fifth leg.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black locust, gray squirrel, red maple
December 20, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A gray, dank morning. The light tapping of meltwater on the porch roof. A single squirrel forages in the trees at the edge of the woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, snow 1 Comment
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 2, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A dark heap on the snow where a squirrel husked a walnut. Two gunshots in quick succession. Soon the mountain will be dotted with gut piles.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, hunters
December 1, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A rattling rain of ice from the pear tree out back where a squirrel forages. Bird tracks in the snow below the porch end with wing-prints.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, icestorm, tracks
November 29, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A maze of squirrel and sparrow tracks between ice-covered tufts of grass glittering in the sun. Down in the valley, a siren starts up.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, icestorm, juncos, sirens, snow 1 Comment
November 26, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The silence of steadily falling snow, punctuated by the tapping of a downy woodpecker and the distant scolding of a squirrel.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags downy woodpecker, gray squirrel, snow 3 Comments
November 16, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Two squirrels circle warily beside the road. A third crosses the stream with a walnut between its teeth and seeing them, takes to the trees.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, stream
October 19, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Unlike last night’s full moon, even this dim smudge of a sun is painful to look at. The sound of rodent teeth chiseling a black walnut.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, moon 1 Comment
October 4, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A squirrel hurls itself from maple to locust, falling, grabbing hold. It runs to the end of a limb and stops, staring across at the walnut.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black locust, black walnut, gray squirrel, red maple
September 26, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Moon in the morning sky like a broken plate. Squirrels are climbing walnut trees and descending with fat green globes between their teeth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, moon
September 21, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The clouds thicken, gravid with rain. A squirrel climbing the walnut tree next to the road pauses on the first limb to lick its genitals.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, rain
September 10, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A squirrel on the lowest branch of the walnut tree next to the road scolds something hidden in the goldenrod, shaking with each harsh cry.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, goldenrod, gray squirrel
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On This Day

  • January 22, 2025
    Two below zero, and at least two gray squirrels are in heat now. I watch a suitor bound over the snow and into the trees,…
  • January 22, 2024
    Between moonset and dawn, a dark hour filled with the sound of freight trains. I hold my head still to watch Venus slip through the…
  • January 22, 2023
    Sky the color of faded jeans. It’s cold. The crash of a dead limb falling from the treetops where two female squirrels are eluding suitors.
  • January 22, 2022
    The coldest morning of the year so far. Every few minutes, a tree with ice in its heartwood cracks like a gunshot. The ridge turns…
  • January 22, 2021
    Half an hour before sunrise, the first inquisitive chirps: mockingbird. A snow-free caesura in the road where the spring flows under it.

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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