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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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litter

April 5, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Rain seasoned with sleet. The trapped balloons hang limply from their dead tree, wrinkled like over-ripe fruit.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags litter, rain, sleet
March 31, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Snow mixed with sleet. The feral balloons have wrapped themselves more tightly around their tree—a classic trade of freedom for security.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags litter, sleet, snow
March 25, 2019March 25, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Trapped in a tree, two balloons bearing a picture of a basketball and the name of a school west of Pittsburgh rub their Mylar skins together.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags litter

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On This Day

  • April 10, 2025
    Sunrise somewhere between showers, cold and sodden, the sky flat-white like the eye of a dead fish. No flies for the flycatchers, no sun for…
  • April 10, 2024
    Rainy and cool. An eastern towhee is urging me—according to the time-honored birders’ mnemonic—to drink my tea, while woodpeckers large and small bang their heads…
  • April 10, 2023
    Clear and cold, with the third-quarter moon just cresting the trees. The dawn chorus begins with a gobbling turkey. A minute later the robin joins…
  • April 10, 2022
    Snowflakes dance wildly but all the daffodils can do is nod and sway. O sweet Canada, sings the sparrow.
  • April 10, 2021
    Overcast with 100% chance of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush. A yellow-bellied sapsucker looking all tapped out.

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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