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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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helicopter

March 2, 2026 by Dave Bonta

A white sky except where the sun blazes, whiter than white. A helicopter’s loud, bladed flower. In its wake, the scattered cries of geese.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Canada geese, clouds, helicopter
November 25, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Dark clouds against light clouds. A distant helicopter. A white-throated sparrow’s plaintive song wandering up and down the scale.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, helicopter, white-throated sparrow 1 Comment
November 10, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Bands of cirrus that might’ve been contrails two hours ago are crossed by a helicopter, ponderous and loud, like an enormous scarab.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, contrails, helicopter
April 20, 2014 by Dave Bonta

A Chinook helicopter flies low over the trees, with its twin rotors like a pair of malignant insects mating in flight, gravid with soldiers.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags helicopter
July 14, 2011 by Dave Bonta

A helicopter alone in the clear sky: the mingled notes of its motor, high and low. A firefly sails past, inner wings glowing in the sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags firefly, helicopter 4 Comments

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On This Day

  • April 3, 2025
    Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
  • April 3, 2024
    In the pre-dawn darkness, nothing but the sounds of rain and water. A low rumbling comes from the hole in my yard that leads down…
  • April 3, 2022
    An unexpected glimpse of sun sets the swelling lilac buds aglow. I see the first few daffodils are trying on the new spring fashions.
  • April 3, 2021
    Cooper’s hawks calling up on the ridge. One of them takes flight: such a small bird to be so strident! And the sky begins to…
  • April 3, 2020
    Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.

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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