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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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haze

July 24, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Cool and clear, but still with some high-altitude murk. I miss the deep blue of my boyhood summers, the bright sun and dark shadows under the trees.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags air quality, haze
July 13, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Haze before the heat. The tulip poplar sprout in its circle of deer fence is waving its newest Mickey Mouse hands.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags haze, tulip tree
May 24, 2023 by Dave Bonta

As early as I get up, I still feel like a late riser: just past six and the birds are already winding down, the sun glimmering though the trees—an eye reddened by smoke from distant forests.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags haze, sunrise

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On This Day

  • October 23, 2025
    Gray skies with a bitter wind. Colored leaves fly past. A pair of gray squirrels meet on the trunk of a black locust and touch snouts.
  • October 23, 2024
    Before dawn, a moon with toothmarks. The tick tock of an acorn dropped by a flying squirrel.
  • October 23, 2023
    First frost here and there like someone’s first white hairs. I crunch through it en route to the top of the field to watch the dawn approaching from 50 miles away.
  • October 23, 2022
    Dawn. Low over the trees, the last sliver of moon like fangs of a snake trying to swallow a dark, glowing egg.
  • October 23, 2021
    A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.

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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All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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