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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

  • July 24, 2025
    Cool and humid. The crows are carrying on again, like one of those families who share their business with the entire Walmart. The top-heading garlic stalks in the yard have split their hoods to reveal what look like compound eyes.
  • July 24, 2024
    Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.
  • July 24, 2023
    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.
  • July 24, 2022
    Hazy but not yet hot. Hummingbirds circle the soapwort patch, as if following the red threads of bindweed.
  • July 24, 2021
    Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.

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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