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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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thermometer

September 20, 2020 by Dave Bonta

The dial thermometer’s red arrow has just missed 0°C. A black tiger moth caterpillar is curled by the stoop like a dropped comma.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, thermometer, tiger moth caterpillar
January 13, 2012January 13, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, snow, thermometer, wind 2 Comments
March 17, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Mid-morning, and the dial thermometer’s big red arrow creeps toward 50. A small sun and bare trees bend in the distance of its convex glass.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags thermometer 2 Comments
March 30, 2010 by Dave Bonta

My dial thermometer’s big red arrow says just above freezing; its shadow says just below. And in the glass, bare trees, clouds flying south.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags thermometer
February 6, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ground-level clouds appear and disappear in the half-dark; even the thermometer is fogged up. Over the roar of the stream, a robin’s song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, fog, stream, thermometer

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On This Day

  • June 29, 2025
    Partly cloudy, humid and still. A hen turkey clucks once from the woods’ edge. I slap myself awake, killing mosquitoes.
  • June 29, 2024
    Heavily overcast; 88% humidity. I’m clapping out the lives of mosquitoes, one after another—too big and slow for their own good. A breeze springs up.
  • June 29, 2022
    Cold and clear. Three waxwings join the sun high in the dead crown of a black locust, yellow bellies aglow.
  • June 29, 2021
    Sunny and hot. The meadows hum with insects. In the marsh, a male and female goldfinch are gathering cattail down for their nest.
  • June 29, 2016
    On the underside of a porch railing, a hornet gathers a mouthful of wood. A small yellow leaf caught in a spiderweb twirls in the wind.

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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