Author Archives

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

• 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 ›

• Ballad for a dying bird one Sunday

  By Bill Pearse on January 8, 2017 • ( 20 )

  I cradled the near-dead bird in my palm, it was the size of a chicken egg and felt warm, I could feel it breathing, though it had its eyes closed like it was wincing, fanning the air with its feet,… Read More ›

• Snow-covered mineshaft grate

  By Bill Pearse on January 7, 2017 • ( 25 )

  

  I took the 900 around the back side of Cougar Mountain, but it doesn’t get much direct light this time of year and the road was icy in early morning, with snow on the trees still—and when Ginger and I… Read More ›

• ‘Time is on my side’

  By Bill Pearse on January 5, 2017 • ( 26 )

  It was the first spring we were in our new house mom and John came to visit. I had some time off from work and it was only May, but the weather forecast was like summer, with everything in bloom,… Read More ›

• The January moon will never be full again

  By Bill Pearse on January 4, 2017 • ( 16 )

  Cruel slant of a moon that could be a fang or a hook, a nail, or a cat’s claw stuck to the sky, pulling it down gloating, feeding until it’s full— but the moon looks empty, full like it wants… Read More ›

• The day we thought we died

  By Bill Pearse on January 3, 2017 • ( 30 )

  It was the first time I started my morning ritual but then stopped and just went back to bed. I got the coffee going, fed the animals, but it was still dark outside so I lay in bed another 20… Read More ›