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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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sunrise

April 10, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Clear at sunrise, bright orange spreading across the field. One of the daffodil buds in my yard looks ready to open: a broad yellow seam.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags daffodils, sunrise
March 13, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. I’m in a staring contest with a groundhog who just emerged from under the house. I blink, and he disappears. A piercing whistle.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags groundhog, sunrise
March 7, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, sunrise, white-breasted nuthatch
February 19, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Cloud-bellies at sunrise: white, yellow, blue-gray, mauve. We’re back to cold weather, and only the house finch sounds happy to be alive.

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

Gray sky at sunrise. The porcupine is late; I watch it coming from a long way off. It pauses to chew on the porch—no taste like home!

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags porcupine, sunrise
February 3, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A clear sunrise, and every twig and blade of grass still wearing its coat of ice. Two titmice drone back and forth amid the glitter.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sunrise, tufted titmouse
November 28, 2007 by Dave Bonta

To see the sunrise, I have to walk to the edge of the porch and look west: red ridge, the gibbous moon high overhead, a pair of ravens.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven, 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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