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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

  • August 22, 2025
    Cool and clearing. Dew drips from the porch roof onto the orange jewelweed, which this morning for the first time receives no visits from a hummingbird.
  • August 22, 2024
    Clear, cold, and still. A hummingbird finds the one wild bergamot blossom hiding next to the porch and circles its purple mop-head, tonguing a dozen tubes.
  • August 22, 2023
    A gray squirrel with a nearly white tail scampering up the road draws my attention to the white snakeroot—banks of it just coming into bloom.
  • August 22, 2022
    Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
  • August 22, 2021
    A few minutes after moonset, and the ground fog is still aglow. A screech owl’s monotone trill.

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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