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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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ruby-throated hummingbird

September 17, 2016 by Dave Bonta

The female hummingbird tries to get nectar out of my red iPad cover again, repeatedly probing the end of the fold, my fingers inches away.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird
September 6, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A hummingbird lands on my red iPad cover and probes the fold with her bill at one end, then the other, while I read an article on the NSA.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird
September 4, 2016 by Dave Bonta

The buzz of a hummingbird sizing up her reflection in a porch window. From behind the house, a Carolina wren’s incessant harangue.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 26, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A female hummingbird leaves the beebalm to check out the red lettering on my t-shirt, a sleek green torpedo hovering inches from my chest.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beebalm, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 19, 2016August 19, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Crystal-clear sky. A piece of thistledown floats past like an airborne jellyfish. A hummingbird visits the last, purple scraps of bergamot.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bergamot, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 16, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Two cabbage whites engage in a dogfight, or possibly a pas de deux. A leaf detaches itself from a lilac branch and turns into a hummingbird.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cabbage white butterfly, lilac, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 13, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Warm and humid. The air is redolent with rot and mold. A hummingbird zooms past, almost too fast for the eye to register. My stomach growls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags humidity, ruby-throated hummingbird
July 26, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird
July 10, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and cool. A buzzing below the porch: when I lean over the rail to look, a hummingbird rises from the jewelweed to meet my gaze.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird
June 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A catbird darts into the weeds. I stand up to look: it’s gobbling down the first ripe raspberries. The buzz of a hummingbird at the beebalm.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black raspberry, catbird, ruby-throated hummingbird
June 15, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Noise from the quarry—a grinding drone that runs under everything: oriole song, woodpecker drumming, a hummingbird’s Geiger-counter clicks.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Baltimore oriole, pileated woodpecker, quarry, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

At the woods’ edge, three yellow hats: iris gone feral. A hummingbird rockets back and forth through the lilac, showing off for a female.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags iris, lilac, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 18, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A rabbit in the rain eats grass the way I eat ramen, one long strip disappearing into its mouth, drops flying. A hummingbird buzzes my face.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cottontail, rain, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 19, 2015 by Dave Bonta

A flat white sky. The ambiguous gestures of random leaves, waving or perhaps drowning in the thick air. A hummingbird is here and gone.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird, tulip tree
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On This Day

  • January 10, 2023
    Overcast but bright, and very quiet apart from the stream’s gurgle. Two squirrels seem to be hanging out, but only one acts amorous—the other remains…
  • January 10, 2021
    The last small cloud melts away. A white-breasted nuthatch calling: such an anxious sound, but who knows? Perhaps it’s a song of exultation.
  • January 10, 2020
    Overcast. A strong smell of sewage from the treatment plant two miles away. Juncos forage in the dead stiltgrass, chirping back and forth.
  • January 10, 2019
    The top of a dying red maple has been blown down across my walk. The wind raises a zombie army of leaves to go staggering…
  • January 10, 2018
    Mackerel clouds above then across the sun like a face consumed by worry lines. The caws of a crow echo off the thawed and refrozen…

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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