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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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pearl crescent

May 29, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Exotic dancers of the Lepidoptera have names like Little Wood Satyr and Pearl Crescent. Their underwings bear black suns and crescent moons.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags little wood satyr, pearl crescent
September 6, 2014 by Dave Bonta

I sit scribbling in a notebook, a pearl crescent butterfly weaving between the legs of my chair. It comes to rest with one wing in the sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pearl crescent
August 25, 2012 by Dave Bonta

A small brown butterfly flutters low over the porch floor, checking out the three brown walnut leaflets, one of which trembles in its wake.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, pearl crescent 2 Comments
June 28, 2012 by Dave Bonta

The plaintive bleat of a left-behind fawn. A pearl crescent butterfly explores my palm with its proboscis, reading between the lines.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, pearl crescent 5 Comments

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On This Day

  • March 14, 2025
    A few degrees above freezing and very still. The full moon hangs above the western ridge, fresh from its run-in with the earth’s shadow, glowing…
  • March 14, 2024
    Bright blear of a sun in a sky more white than blue. Its light reflecting off the window behind me means I am lit on…
  • March 14, 2023
    The porch is plastered with fresh snow; more flakes fly past without stopping. A Carolina wren holds forth from the heart of a barberry.
  • March 14, 2022
    Sunrise reddens the western ridge and its whine of traffic. Cardinal song. With my last sip of tea, the sun strikes my face.
  • March 14, 2021
    Can daylight be saved? An hour late, I watch the sun assemble itself among the ridgetop trees one blazing shard at a time—a kind of…

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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