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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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opossum

April 26, 2026 by Dave Bonta

In the half-light of dawn, the pale apparition of an opossum at the edge of the woods. It climbs through the lilac, zigzags across the rain-soaked yard and disappears into the crawlspace under my house.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags lilac, opossum
May 11, 2024 by Dave Bonta

An hour past sunrise, an opossum is out hunting earthworms pushed out of their burrows by the all-night rain. She keeps pausing to raise her snout and sniff the air like a connoisseur.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags opossum, rain
March 19, 2013 by Dave Bonta

In the new snow, the splayed-hand tracks of an opossum cross the porch. A brown creeper busies itself on a tree at the wood’s edge.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown creeper, opossum, snow 1 Comment

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On This Day

  • October 31, 2025
    Cold wind seasoned with rain—almost maritime weather. I sit in my old barn coat like a barnacle, listening for the approach of dawn.
  • October 31, 2024
    A cloud that started life as a contrail turns livid as a cut then slowly fades to white before dissolving. A white-throated sparrow repeatedly sings a single, interrogatory note.
  • October 31, 2023
    As the moonlight fades, pale patches remain—a killing frost. The woods’ edge is nearly bare of leaves below the brick-red crowns of the oaks.
  • October 31, 2022
    A half hour after sunrise, a rattling in the fallen leaves: raindrops! Slowly accelerating into an actual shower. Which peters out much too soon.
  • October 31, 2021
    The rain stops but the trees go on dripping. The sky brightens. Through newly bare spicebush branches, I can see the springhouse once again.

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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