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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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thunder

July 18, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool, with the smell of smoke a bit diminished. The patter of rain. Three yellow walnut leaves flutter to the ground together. A rumble of thunder.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, rain, thunder
February 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Fog full of birdsong. I look up from the page to a rumble of thunder that makes the windows shake.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, thunder
July 25, 2022 by Dave Bonta

The sky never gets fully light before thunder starts to rumble. Now it’s getting dark again. The birds fall silent.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags thunder, thunderstorms
April 26, 2022 by Dave Bonta

The tulip trees have burst their buds—a gray-green haze. Hermit thrush in my left ear, thunder in my right.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags hermit thrush, thunder, tulip tree

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On This Day

  • September 25, 2025
    Steady rain. An hour past daybreak, it begins to get dark again. The rain comes down harder. A cardinal chirps.
  • September 25, 2024
    Dark and rainy at sunrise, the cardinal like a pilot light in the recesses of the lilac chirping back and forth with his mate.
  • September 25, 2023
    A few minutes before sunrise, a crack followed by a crash from just inside the woods. I delude myself that I can detect the type of tree: sounds like a red maple, I’d say. So unlike the way they come into the world—miniature claws already red with autumn.
  • September 25, 2022
    Showers give way to tentative sunlight by late morning. It’s quiet. A lone blue jay calls.
  • September 25, 2021
    The unfamiliar clouds of my breath. A phoebe calling in the sun-drenched crown of a walnut tree, beneath that old slice of apple, the moon.

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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