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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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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

  • 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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