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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

  • September 3, 2025
    Snakeroot flower heads are beginning to open, white as the cows’ milk that they’re said to poison. A sunbeam reaching the porch shows me the shape of my breath.
  • September 3, 2024
    The coldest morning since May, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the east—the slightly quieter direction. The Carolina wren duets with beeping quarry trucks.
  • September 3, 2023
    Clear and not as cool. A catbird mews from the lilac. Rays of sun in the canopy are astir with gossamer wings.
  • September 3, 2022
    As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.
  • September 3, 2021
    5:58 am. The crescent moon is increasingly alone in the sky as the dawn light metastasizes. A distant whippoorwill.

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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