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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

  • April 12, 2025
    Cold and heavily overcast. A gray squirrel emerges from the woods like a ghost, seeming to float over the rain-darkened leaf duff, fur the color…
  • April 12, 2024
    Wind throbs in the treetops; the birdcall app thinks it’s a drumming grouse. Juncos twitter from the lilac, which has just burst its buds—a green…
  • April 12, 2023
    Two phoebes in a singing contest at dawn. A warm breeze. The half-moon settles in a tall pine.
  • April 12, 2022
    Warm rain. Phoebe and robin drown out the night chant of peepers. All the daffodils’ cups have turned bottoms-up.
  • April 12, 2021
    Overcast and cool. Up on the ridge, two or three crows scold a Cooper’s hawk: high-pitched whines, a gargling rattle. The hawk zips off.

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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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