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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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rose-breasted grosbeak

May 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cool and increasingly cloudy as the sun clears the treetops—a bright spot in the gray. A rose-breasted grosbeak sings. Chipmunk metronomes go in and out of sync.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, clouds, rose-breasted grosbeak
May 1, 2022 by Dave Bonta

After insomnia, watching the rain come in and whatever brightness the morning might’ve had dwindling to just rose-breasted grosbeak song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, rose-breasted grosbeak
April 29, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, ovenbird, rose-breasted grosbeak
May 30, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A rose-breasted grosbeak flutters up from the creek singing clear, cool notes. A cranefly drifts through a sunbeam, carrying its legs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cranefly, rose-breasted grosbeak, stream

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On This Day

  • January 7, 2025
    Bitter cold with a wind. The happy sounds of juncos coming down to drink from the spring’s thin trickle. Overhead, a faint wash of pink.
  • January 7, 2024
    Gray above, white below: a snowbird hops atop five inches of fresh snow, noshing on goldenrod, snakeroot, and stiltgrass seeds, leaving lines of little arrows…
  • January 7, 2023
    Overcast and quiet, with a fresh​ dusting of snow. A squirrel loses its nerve and backs off from a death-defying leap.
  • January 7, 2021
    Cloudy and cold. The sound of crows trying to call up a mob. A squirrel perched on a high branch scratches behind its ear with…
  • January 7, 2020
    Snow. I unfocus my gaze and the flakes become threads, runnels, roots. I remember a dream in which my beard had grown down to the…

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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