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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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wind

May 11, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool. Patches of blue sky begin to appear. The birds are relatively quiet—probably too busy eating after a cold night.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wind
May 2, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Like green tassels on Victorian lampshades the birch catkins fluttering in the breeze. It’s warm—a perfect day for tree sex.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black birch, wind
April 30, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Trees bend and sway in the wind: how seldom they collide, how little noise they make! A black-and-white warbler wheezes like a pump handle.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-and-white warbler, wind
April 2, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Bitter wind. Up in the woods, sun glints off an old jar the frost heaved up. When I go to fetch it, ice colonnades crumble under my boots.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, wind
March 26, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and warm with high winds, as if March’s proverbial lion and lamb were the same. Trees sway drunkenly. Their dead shed leaves rise up.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wind
March 2, 2021 by Dave Bonta

An hour before sunrise, the bitter wind says winter but the creek says spring. The moon’s gone flat, but is still as bright as a false dawn.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, moon, stream, wind
March 1, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A few hours into March and the wind starts to gust. On south-facing slopes, scattered splotches of bare ground like an incipient rash.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags snow, wind
February 3, 2021 by Dave Bonta

This is winter as I remember it from my childhood: more than a foot of drifting snow at 20°F. The Carolina wren is singing under the house.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, snow, wind
February 2, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The snowstorm over, it’s quiet, except for the wind. A cardinal shelters in a barberry bush, as red as the berries had been.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cardinal, snow, snowstorm, wind
January 23, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The one-time slush pile in the yard looks hard as a wind-dried bone. The tall pines sigh in their sleep. I begin to lose feeling in my toes.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, snow, white pines, wind
December 25, 2020 by Dave Bonta

A bitter wind salted with snow. I spot an orange ornament on a lilac branch: a jelly ear fungus, too pretty to eat, sporting a tiny icicle.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jelly ear fungus, snowflakes, wind
December 9, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Light clouds in the east, dark clouds in the west, and everywhere the hush of the wind. A hawk goes by too fast for the squirrels to notice.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags accipiter, clouds, wind
November 28, 2020 by Dave Bonta

An east wind raises fallen leaves and makes them fly. The most aerodynamic ones circle slowly, as if searching for the best resting place.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fall foliage, wind
November 16, 2020 by Dave Bonta

A cold front roared in overnight. Now the wind has dropped and the clouds are clearing out. Tall goldenrod stalks shake their gray heads.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, goldenrod, wind
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On This Day

  • August 22, 2025
    Cool and clearing. Dew drips from the porch roof onto the orange jewelweed, which this morning for the first time receives no visits from a hummingbird.
  • August 22, 2024
    Clear, cold, and still. A hummingbird finds the one wild bergamot blossom hiding next to the porch and circles its purple mop-head, tonguing a dozen tubes.
  • August 22, 2023
    A gray squirrel with a nearly white tail scampering up the road draws my attention to the white snakeroot—banks of it just coming into bloom.
  • August 22, 2022
    Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
  • August 22, 2021
    A few minutes after moonset, and the ground fog is still aglow. A screech owl’s monotone trill.

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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