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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

  • August 13, 2025
    A dawn chorus of tree crickets, field crickets and mole crickets. After a half-clear sunrise, the clouds move in.
  • August 13, 2024
    A meteor streaks the dawn sky—a fast, yellow brushstroke. From over the ridge, the quarry’s dull grind. The first, faint twittering from the meadow.
  • August 13, 2023
    Sun in the treetops. A Carolina wren keeps answering a flicker, as if trying to master its call. Tree crickets. A train horn.
  • August 13, 2022
    45F/7C at sunrise. I carry a chair up into the woods, watch sunlight seep down the oaks with color commentary by a red-eyed vireo.
  • August 13, 2021
    First light. A meteor slices through Orion below the belt, and I flinch like a spectator at a pro wrestling match.

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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