sunrise

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.

10/17/2008

Dave Bonta October 17, 2008

After an orange sunrise, the morning turns overcast and still. Two pileated woodpeckers fly over, one after the other—slow silent missiles.

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow