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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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rain

December 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The snow on the road has turned to quaking puddles. The low rumble of a freight train is the only thing audible above the downpour.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, train
November 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, rain, snow
November 26, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rainfall stopping by sunrise. An oak leaf comes sailing out of the woods and spirals down onto the porch. Holes in the clouds open and close like blue wounds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, oaks, rain, sunrise, wind 1 Comment
November 24, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Light rain at sunrise swept away by a light breeze, the monochrome sky accented by a pair of ravens, and down here a nuthatch going over the rules.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, rain, raven, sunrise, white-breasted nuthatch, wind
November 21, 2024 by Dave Bonta

A red dawn, a redder sunrise, and a rain shower half an hour after that on the still-novel metal roof. I imagine a steel-pan drummer playing avant-garde calypso.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, rain, sunrise
November 15, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Every morning should come with fog like this, and the leftovers of an all-night rain still dripping onto the porch roof, and bright lichen on dark bark, and chickadees.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chickadees, fog, lichen, rain 2 Comments
November 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

After rain in the small hours, a clearing wind at dawn. Winter wren song issues from a hole in the road bank—a quiet torrent.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, rain, winter wren
October 2, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and everything was delicious!

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, dreams, rain 2 Comments
October 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The rain slackens toward mid-morning and I can hear chirps and twitters: warblers in their muted autumn colors foraging for breakfast in the treetops.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fall warblers, rain
September 30, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rain. The rumble of a distant jet. A squirrel crouches on a limb with her tail over her head, chiseling open a walnut.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, rain
September 29, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles my face.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, gray squirrel, moths, rain
September 25, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Dark and rainy at sunrise, the cardinal like a pilot light in the recesses of the lilac chirping back and forth with his mate.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cardinal, rain, sunrise
September 24, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags goldenrod, gray squirrel, rain
September 23, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, rain, towhee, wood thrush
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On This Day

  • March 23, 2025
    Clear, cold, and quiet. The rising moon gleams like a scimitar as it passes behind the big tulip tree, and emerges five minutes later as…
  • March 23, 2024
    Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road.
  • March 23, 2023
    Fog and scattered showers. The last few woodcock peents overlap with phoebes—two of them already, trying to out-sing each other.
  • March 23, 2022
    Ten-thirty and the promised rain finally begins to whisper in the dry leaves—a mountain’s worth of hush drowning out all distant engines.
  • March 23, 2021
    The last patch of snow is sinking into the earth. A titmouse flits from branch to branch up a walnut sapling, whistling softly to himself.

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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