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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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lightning

September 22, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Lightning flickers on the horizon at dawn. The dull glow of the crescent moon’s darkened bulk reminds me that the earth also shines.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, lightning, moon 1 Comment
September 29, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Hard rain. My brain feels sluggish, despite coffee. A flash of lightning like the apotheosis of all this yellow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fall foliage, lightning, rain
February 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A downpour. Just above the ridge, a sudden flash followed by a teeth-rattling rumble, the outline of an inverted tree fading on my retina.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags lightning, rain

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On This Day

  • January 15, 2025
    A fresh scurf of snow on the porch. The trees with their moon-shadows stretching east like dark carpets rolled out for the rumored sun. All…
  • January 15, 2024
    7F/-14C at dawn. The rifle-crack of a tree with ice in its heartwood. I peer like some ancient mummy through my layers of cloth.
  • January 15, 2023
    Cold (20F/-7C) and clear. The half-moon is an ear cocked to the west, where sunrise spreads down the ridge like an orange rash.
  • January 15, 2021
    An unfeasibly large number of chickadees foraging along the woods’ edge, calling, singing, dangling from black birch twigs like mutant fruit.
  • January 15, 2020
    Slow winter dawn: light leaking through the trees. A Carolina wren’s molto vivace prompts his mate to respond in sforzando.

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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