Author Archives

Unknown's avatar

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

  • Judgment

    By on • ( 16 )

    The trail is dry at the park and crunches underfoot. For the first time I brought a bunch of people with me to my morning walk, Dawn’s family who’s visiting from out of state. We’d just be out for an… Read More ›

  • The Can

    By on • ( 8 )

    Just a few days past the solstice and already I imagined the morning light had changed. But it was that queer wildfire effect from somewhere making the sunlight pink-gold, all the treetops like a Maxfield Parrish painting psychedelic. I first… Read More ›

  • Sporting Life

    By on • ( 14 )

    There was the sweetest deer and her fawn that had been coming around the yard. But I didn’t want them munching on Dawn’s lace tree so I sprayed it with coyote urine. I used a lot more than I needed… Read More ›

  • I hate you

    By on • ( 6 )

    In typical Seattle fashion the first day of summer was 15 degrees below average with rain. I threw open the windows to celebrate and turned on the heat. Dried the bath towels over the vents and got up at 4,… Read More ›

  • Everything is beautiful

    By on • ( 10 )

    After six months of escalating daylight I was ready for it to end. I’d been falling asleep to an Egyptian oud player with the volume so low it sounded like he was slapping his drum right next to me. It… Read More ›

  • Dirty rag

    By on • ( 24 )

    Dawn unemployed, me about to be, Charlotte’s school nearing the end and Lily not working yet, the four of us are often at home dirtying it. Then there is the dog and cat and the kids’ friends leaving their paints… Read More ›

  • Make hay

    By on • ( 17 )

    I lay in bed with the windows open and the sound of the lawn sprinkler rotating. Just five more days of work. When it’s over they don’t bring you a cake or slap you on the back and say good… Read More ›

  • “You’re gonna go, I know…”

    By on • ( 15 )

    It was so quiet where we lived. I could lay in the hammock and just hear the sound of the neighbor’s air conditioner and occasional cars, long spans of silence with birds peeping. The cars could be mistaken for low… Read More ›

  • Sunday sermon

    By on • ( 8 )

    Mornings were best for napping in the picture window on the lip of the sofa if you were a cat with nothing to do. Treated like royalty, we brought him his food, kept his water bowl full, his cat box… Read More ›

  • Those purple hills

    By on • ( 4 )

    You can smell Tacoma coming from miles away. Rounding the bend on the freeway, how the sky opens up like it did that day driving to the beach after college, to live there the whole summer. The size of the… Read More ›