Author Archives

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

• Nothing perfect or terrible

  By Bill Pearse on January 18, 2017 • ( 10 )

  

  We drove down to London from Stratford mid-January, found our place, parked, confirmed the length of our stay with the manager who warned the time would go by fast, which was fine by me: we’d been out of our house… Read More ›

• A message for a Golem one morning

  By Bill Pearse on January 17, 2017 • ( 26 )

  

  Clouds spun out in pillowy strands, like cotton candy. The frozen leaves on the rhododendrons collapsed in on themselves like umbrellas. They had a copy of The Corrections in the lending library on the dead end street so I nabbed… Read More ›

• Running across the ice

  By Bill Pearse on January 16, 2017 • ( 33 )

  

  When it was still dark I walked to the lake to see if the moon was out and reflecting on the surface now that it was frozen. Even the edges along the shore were frozen, sealed shut. It hadn’t frozen… Read More ›

• Why it’s hard getting rid of things we identify with

  By Bill Pearse on January 15, 2017 • ( 30 )

  

  I couldn’t imagine getting rid of the African robes. Dawn’s on this kick now from a book where you categorically go through things to determine what brings you joy and if it doesn’t, you get rid of it. We’re putting… Read More ›

• Possibility of ground collapse or fatal gases

  By Bill Pearse on January 14, 2017 • ( 16 )

  

  I got up as the moon was going down, and back along the icy trails of Cougar Mountain we went, my dog Ginger and I. After I peed she peed in the same spot, like we were playing some game… Read More ›

• Magnificent return to splendor

  By Bill Pearse on January 13, 2017 • ( 24 )

  

  All the grisly-bearded rooftops in the morning covered with frost, warming up the car. Realizing I’m falling into familiar work patterns, things I used to do in my last job: going out to the car a few minutes before I… Read More ›

• Part of the earth froze and we with it too

  By Bill Pearse on January 12, 2017 • ( 1 )

  

  Those flattened-down fronds and tree limbs too, the holes in our road frozen over, and in our yard this morning the little birds stir for what little food they can—like us, their lives held together by such small things.

• Once more to elsewhere (“are you paying attention?”)

  By Bill Pearse on January 11, 2017 • ( 22 )

  All the details of the world when you’re really in it. The guy at the gas station wheeling in the delivery, the small, waking patterns along the seam of morning, how the mind spins and shakes and follows whatever flickers… Read More ›

• A hot bath with David Bowie’s last record

  By Bill Pearse on January 10, 2017 • ( 7 )

  

  At their height the veins in these hands looked like power cords, like ridge lines on the moon pumping blood from the heart to the fingers, swollen blue but now, more summertime worms scarcely seen, dried up, bloodless: there, it… Read More ›

• For all its life, it ends in a poem

  By Bill Pearse on January 9, 2017 • ( 4 )

  

  I laid the little bird inside a planting pot with a leafless plant, a veil of snow on top— and as the wind picked up I imagined it coaxed the little bird’s soul along, somewhere new— and when I held… Read More ›