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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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thunderstorms

September 3, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Daybreak comes in a lull between storms. An orange leaf spirals down at the woods’ edge as thunder rumbles off to the east, and now again in the west. A green stink bug crawls under the arm of my green chair.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fall foliage, stink bugs, thunderstorms
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
June 21, 2022 by Dave Bonta

One gray squirrel shadows another, nose to tail, down the gray driveway. Mid-morning thunder. A patter of rain.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, rain, thunderstorms

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On This Day

  • October 16, 2025
    Clear and cold, with a breeze out of the north. I get my winter coat out of storage, make clouds with my breath. Church bells from town toll the hour.
  • October 16, 2024
    Overcast and gloomy. A single scarlet bough glows like a stoplight in the dark woods. The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker.
  • October 16, 2023
    Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
  • October 16, 2022
    Colors so much warmer than the air. Halfway through the morning, the sky clears. Sun in the treetops. A phoebe calls.
  • October 16, 2021
    The last star blinks out just as rain begins to tap on the roof. A spring pepper calls. Dawn begins to seem like a possibility.

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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All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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