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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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house wren

October 19, 2016 by Dave Bonta

The barberry beside the stream is turning from the inside out: under a green cloak, salmon pink, blood-red beads, the hurdy-gurdy of a wren.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags barberry, fall foliage, house wren, stream 1 Comment
September 25, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold. A squirrel trots into the woods with the green globe of a walnut clenched in its teeth. The oleaginous burble of a wren.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, house wren
August 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The low-frequency hum of a passing jet vibrates the windows and the ladder’s metal rungs. A wren chatters alarm at the missing floorboards.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags house wren
July 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A house wren ascends a stepladder in the steady rain. With a sudden crack, the cherry tree beside the porch sheds a dead branch.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cherry tree, house wren

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On This Day

  • December 24, 2024
    A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting…
  • December 24, 2023
    A few degrees above freezing, heavily overcast, and dead quiet apart from the spring’s low gurgle. A bluebird sings two notes and lapses back into…
  • December 24, 2022
    -2F/-20C. Even under two hats and a beard, the windward side of my face turns numb. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas: bleak…
  • December 24, 2021
    Moonlight fades but the driveway glows even whiter: a new quarter-inch of snow. The sky is clear. Treetop goldfinches start to chatter.
  • December 24, 2020
    White sky and white ground meet in a blur of fog. Above the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s minor-key song.

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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