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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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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

  • March 14, 2025
    A few degrees above freezing and very still. The full moon hangs above the western ridge, fresh from its run-in with the earth’s shadow, glowing…
  • March 14, 2024
    Bright blear of a sun in a sky more white than blue. Its light reflecting off the window behind me means I am lit on…
  • March 14, 2023
    The porch is plastered with fresh snow; more flakes fly past without stopping. A Carolina wren holds forth from the heart of a barberry.
  • March 14, 2022
    Sunrise reddens the western ridge and its whine of traffic. Cardinal song. With my last sip of tea, the sun strikes my face.
  • March 14, 2021
    Can daylight be saved? An hour late, I watch the sun assemble itself among the ridgetop trees one blazing shard at a time—a kind of…

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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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