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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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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

  • July 2, 2025
    Clear, cool, and dry at last. Shadows have sharp outlines; patches of sun in the woods or meadow glow like places apart. A small breeze inhabits the top of the tulip tree, paging through its leaves.
  • July 2, 2024
    The garlic heads in my yard give pause: a crowd of inverted commas, punctuating wildly. A goldfinch drops by to strip the seeds from an old weed stalk.
  • July 2, 2022
    A few drips of rain. The squeaky begging of a fledgling at the woods’ edge. It breaks cover to hazard flying—a flurry of wingbeats.
  • July 2, 2021
    Overcast and cool. A clatter of hooves on moss as a half-grown fawn runs past, just inside the woods’ edge. The distant ringing of a phone.
  • July 2, 2016
    A chipmunk crouches atop the stone wall. In the strong sunlight I can see how nervous energy ripples through its fur from head to tail.

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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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