sunrise

4/10/2009

Dave Bonta April 10, 2009

Twenty minutes after the feral cat disappeared under the porch, the squirrel still scolds. Rain is a soft patter of lead shot—or so I wish.

3/13/2009

Dave Bonta March 13, 2009

Clear and cold at sunrise. The feral cat slinks across the springhouse meadow. Muffled sounds of a squirrel scolding from inside its drey.

3/7/2009

Dave Bonta March 7, 2009

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper’s hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat.

2/24/2009

Dave Bonta February 24, 2009

Cloudless and cold at sunrise. Two titmice drone back and forth, like a pair of insurance agents at a party trying to out-bore each other.

2/21/2009

Dave Bonta February 21, 2009

A section of latticework below the porch floor has fallen off, and though it kept nothing out, I feel strangely vulnerable. A red sunrise.

2/19/2009

Dave Bonta February 19, 2009

Snowflakes make the wind visible. Who knew the yard was home to such complex currents? The anxious calls of a nuthatch on the far shore.

2/17/2009

Dave Bonta February 17, 2009

Just past sunrise, the powerline is a tongue of light off through the woods. A heavy contrail drifts toward the sun like a deepening frown.

2/9/2009

Dave Bonta February 9, 2009

A cloudless sunrise. Snow lingers on the west-facing hillside, hard and ugly as guilt. For the first time in months, a bluebird’s song.

2/3/2009

Dave Bonta February 3, 2009

At half-light, small explosions of wings and twittering from around the side of the house as birds leave their roosts in the cedar tree.

2/1/2009

Dave Bonta February 1, 2009

Clear at sunrise. The squeaks of courting squirrels are almost indistinguishable from the squeaks of the trees, rocking in the warm wind.

1/16/2009

Dave Bonta January 16, 2009

Clear at sunrise, and so cold the mucous freezes in my nostrils. Trees pop at random intervals. A good day to be a black bear, fast asleep.

12/30/2008

Dave Bonta December 30, 2008

Clear and cold at sunrise, with gusts of wind and a roaring up on the ridge. Chickadees like yard-sale shoppers darting from find to find.

12/28/2008

Dave Bonta December 28, 2008

Rainbow at sunrise in the mist above the half-red ridge. I race up the driveway in my pyjamas, only to find the camera’s batteries are dead.

11/28/2008

Dave Bonta November 28, 2008

An hour before dawn, a deer-shaped shadow drifts out of the woods, apparitional against the snow, like the photographic negative of a ghost.

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow