Author Archives

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

• 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 ›

• Trump, Orwell and the carnage of lies

  By Bill Pearse on January 27, 2017 • ( 41 )

  

  Last year I read 1984 after we’d gotten back to Germany, in February. I was sick and feverish, and finished it in two nights. In the preface it said Orwell had lived through two world wars (he died shortly after… Read More ›

• Interview with Western Slope Poet Laureate | Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

  By Bill Pearse on January 26, 2017 • ( 31 )

  

  Today I get to share one of the writers who’s inspired me most over the past year, through her commitment to a daily writing practice, and living an artful life. Enjoy this interview with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and follow her… Read More ›

• ‘How little remains’ (on youth, memory, memoir)

  By Bill Pearse on January 25, 2017 • ( 26 )

  I went back to the old apartment. The old apartment was best going back to alone. I tried taking my kids there or Dawn, but to them it was just an old apartment. To me, there was so much more…. Read More ›