Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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When the pines begin to cry
It had been a long time since I heard the owls cry in the night. Last night in bed I counted three in the distance, a hoot-hoot with a menacing tone. It reminded me of waking in Marrakech to the… Read More ›
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After blackberry picking
I remember the day Lily and I came home from our road trip. We’d left Utah on a Sunday morning and reached Seattle by lunchtime on Tuesday. Hadn’t driven more than six hours a day, surprised by how quickly it… Read More ›
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New school blues
In the dream I am in my underwear and we are in a crowded public square this time of year, this going back to school time we are all of us in our underwear in our dreams looking down, wondering… Read More ›
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Bookending
You could see where the landscape fabric was poking through the bark I put down in the beds and that rankled me. I hated seeing the irregularities, the underlying scheme. I could get really anal retentive like that. We noticed… Read More ›
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Sand tray therapy
It is here I feel most at home. Oil City. The worst name for the best place. No oil, no city: a developer’s name, a get-rich scheme. There is no imagination in the name only nature here, no boundaries or… Read More ›
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Work ID
I went back to work. In the last year I’d only worked nine weeks, two short contracts. Now I had a contract through the end of June, 2024 with the possibility to extend by another six months. The certainty felt… Read More ›
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Knowing what it’s like to be a snake
It was there on the trail I saw the snake and saw the world from that point of view To be a snake and never know what it was like to drive a car, read a book, or drink a… Read More ›
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There’s nothing soft about softball
My whole body hurt. Softball made me do things I normally wouldn’t do, like sprint. Or leap. I even stretched for as long as I could. Swung the bat, rolled my shoulders out. Still I was stiff for days. I… Read More ›
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Giving it up
Flipping through the photos on my phone it’s upsetting to see all these pictures of me drinking. Why I felt the need to photograph myself doing that, and how stupid I look. It’s kind of funny to see myself like… Read More ›
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100% remote
Softly the leaves on the burning bush began to turn. In my mind I pictured it going red then dropping like confetti, like broken glass. No car alarms or sirens in the suburbs, just the sound of our lawn sprinkler… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 