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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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sunrise

February 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sunrise
February 19, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sunrise, white-breasted nuthatch
February 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags porcupine, powerline, sunrise
February 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, sunrise
February 3, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sunrise
February 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, sunrise
January 16, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bear, sunrise
December 30, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chickadee, gray squirrel, sunrise
December 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rainbow, stream, sunrise
November 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, sunrise
October 17, 2008 by Dave Bonta

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

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pileated woodpecker, sunrise
October 12, 2008 by Dave Bonta

BAM. BAM. BAM. The red crest of a pileated woodpecker flashes into view from the dead side of a maple, sunrise orange on the hill behind.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pileated woodpecker, sunrise
August 14, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise comes with a soundtrack of grinding and beeping from the quarry to our east. Right below the railing, goldenrod bobs: a winter wren.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags goldenrod, sunrise
August 8, 2008 by Dave Bonta

At sunrise, a pair of screech owls trill back and forth, one high, one low, as orange-and-purple clouds race overhead.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags screech owl, sunrise
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On This Day

  • April 5, 2025
    Overcast and quiet, after the drama of a thunderstorm at dawn. The creekside currant bushes have turned intensely green. A hen turkey’s peevish rasp.
  • April 5, 2024
    Dark and overcast at dawn. The creek has subsided—a hubbub rather than a roar. The cardinal who roosts in the red cedar next to the…
  • April 5, 2022
    Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
  • April 5, 2021
    Lust is in the air: a turkey gobbling in the field, a Cooper’s hawk calling in the woods, and right in front of me, a…
  • April 5, 2020
    Again this morning around 10:30, for the fifth day in a row, a Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods. In the hawk’s mind, it…

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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