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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 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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