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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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spring peepers

October 28, 2023 by Dave Bonta

In the dawn light, the tulip poplars glow a deep orange. It’s unseasonably warm. A spring peeper calls at the edge of the woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags spring peepers, tulip tree
September 9, 2023 by Dave Bonta

A whippoorwill interrupted by a screech owl falls silent after three attempts to steal back the stage. When the owl falls silent, a peeper calls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags screech owl, spring peepers, whippoorwill
April 7, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Dark and rainy at sunrise; ridgetop lost in fog. Down in the boggy corner of the meadow, one spring peeper is still calling.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, rain, spring peepers, sunrise
October 16, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The last star blinks out just as rain begins to tap on the roof. A spring pepper calls. Dawn begins to seem like a possibility.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, rain, spring peepers, stars

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On This Day

  • February 1, 2025
    Temperature falling as the sun rises. The sound of wind from far off. A small scarlet oak that kept some of its leaves shivers a…
  • February 1, 2024
    Just past sunrise the sky almost clears, then clouds over again. The thermometer’s black arrow points straight at 32. The mound of plowed slow at…
  • February 1, 2023
    I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this: bitter cold with the ground mostly bare. Chickadees are having a fracas. Snow drifts down…
  • February 1, 2022
    With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats.
  • February 1, 2021
    Half-way through a slow snowstorm. The birds seem restless. First a titmouse, then a nuthatch land on the edge of the porch to tell me…

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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