Author Archives

Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

• The color of late afternoon, snow covered slopes

  By Bill Pearse on February 6, 2017 • ( 32 )

  

  When we found out the kids’ school was cancelled for snow I made them stay up with me until midnight (Dawn was gone), they both fell asleep on the sofa, we’d been out in the storm past 10 and the… Read More ›

• Someone called ‘The Necromancer’ is on the line, and they say it’s really important

  By Bill Pearse on February 6, 2017 • ( 22 )

  

  The smartphone moved with him from room to room as a torch in a dark and threatening castle, everything outside its light potentially harmful. And in public places where people otherwise had the chance to connect now they didn’t, they… Read More ›

• Sunday morning salutation

  By Bill Pearse on February 5, 2017 • ( 18 )

  When the sun rose you could hardly tell. A set of bats stirred from their perch, and were gone. The whole tree, made of bats. Some branches wagged and bobbed, didn’t say a word. The gray inaction, Sunday morning. Even… Read More ›

• Winter takes Queen

  By Bill Pearse on February 4, 2017 • ( 20 )

  

  One of the signs of getting older is realizing there’s only one sweater you really need and then sticking to it, hanging it like a coat in the entryway for quick and easy access: and because you happen to be… Read More ›

• More posts about baths, please

  By Bill Pearse on February 3, 2017 • ( 16 )

  How impossibly dark it gets here in the afternoons sometimes. I lay in the bath with the pork roast brining and thought about the father-daughter Valentine’s dance at the community center, the one coming up that Charlotte seems so excited… Read More ›

• A degree off from beige

  By Bill Pearse on February 3, 2017 • ( 17 )

  

  I don’t know why, but I built a fire out back in the afternoon and stood by it. It got so cold one night a planting pot blew out the side and hung open like a cartoon mouth on a… Read More ›

• Now this is good

  By Bill Pearse on February 2, 2017 • ( 6 )

  

  The dog by my side in the morning in the dark: Orion left his belt outside again, it’s gone down behind the trees: soft sounds, early morning, the jingle of the cat’s bell around her neck, the dog’s got a… Read More ›

• ‘Why we try’ | on symbols and habits

  By Bill Pearse on February 1, 2017 • ( 34 )

  

  The way the sun came through the windows made it look like lattice, the shadows of the tree branches on the window sills. I thought about dropping mom at the airport, but really thought about it because I’d thought about… Read More ›

• Inauguration day

  By Bill Pearse on January 31, 2017 • ( 16 )

  

  At the very end of January the light is always the same. Though the sky’s cold and gray, the clouds balled-up fists, the calendar adds a square each day, a few more minutes of sun before it swings on a… Read More ›

• The sweet smell of woodsmoke mixed with ocean spray

  By Bill Pearse on January 30, 2017 • ( 23 )

  

  I pulled into Portland around sunset, crossed the grated bridge through the city limits, two fingers of light left on the horizon. Hard to keep my eyes on the road with the snow-covered volcanoes on my left, the sky turning… Read More ›