Skip to content

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
  • About
  • Subscribe/Follow
  • On This Day
  • Keyword index
  • Links
    • Via Negativa
    • Moving Poems
    • DaveBonta.com
    • Woodrat Photoblog

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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
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.

Share on social media

  • Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, pearl crescent 5 Comments

FOLLOW VIA EMAIL

Pick up a free subscription (with options for daily and weekly digests) courtesy of WordPress.com.

Join 278 other subscribers

On This Day

  • June 7, 2025
    Rain at sunrise. A flower longhorn beetle takes refuge under the porch, landing beside my mug. The crash of a falling limb.
  • June 7, 2024
    A commotion of gray squirrels in the spicebush next to the springhouse, where one seems to be in estrus-induced discomfort, and five others are there to help out.
  • June 7, 2023
    Clear—or what passes for it these days—and cold. The black digger wasp I last saw at dusk hasn’t moved from her spot on the porch column.
  • June 7, 2022
    Overcast. Random knocks from an unseen woodpecker. A white-breasted nuthatch’s nervous call punctuates a wood pewee’s song.
  • June 7, 2021
    Gray sky gravid with bad weather. On either side of the road, the tall grass trembles: foraging chipmunks.

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)

Copyleft

Creative Commons License
All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

© 2026 The Morning Porch • Built with GeneratePress