Author Archives

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

• The mountains kissed the sky

  By Bill Pearse on April 20, 2021 • ( 13 )

  

  Early morning walks when the light is coming on, the sky peach and the mountains blue. A morning like this your dad calls to say he has cancer: not the kind to really worry about but still, “cancer.” He’s trying… Read More ›

• Ode to Weber

  By Bill Pearse on April 18, 2021 • ( 31 )

  

  I bought a new charcoal grill, the kettle kind. If I keep this one as long as I did the last I’ll be 68 when I’m done with it. Sixty-eight, dragging it to the curb. Some things you can’t salvage… Read More ›

• Before there were selfies we just had ourselves

  By Bill Pearse on April 3, 2021 • ( 36 )

  

  One by one they led us to a room with a stool and a camera and a blank screen. And took a DNA sample of our souls for a square in a frame to disperse on the winds. And that… Read More ›

• Pain is the toughest riddle

  By Bill Pearse on March 27, 2021 • ( 18 )

  

  Alan talks about his time in the SEALs but I never probe for more because he knows I’m a writer and I feel like a thief casing someone’s mansion when he starts telling a story.

• Quilt of boar skin and bone

  By Bill Pearse on March 20, 2021 • ( 8 )

  

  I lay in the driveway flat as a spatchcocked chicken with the bay doors open and the Captain Beefheart blasting. That old charcoal grill was so beat up the legs popped out when you emptied the ash. The insides were… Read More ›

• New moon for you

  By Bill Pearse on March 13, 2021 • ( 27 )

  

  Lily and I walked the trail to a frost-covered field the color of bone, of yellowing teeth. And she talked of her world view as it’s grown, now 16, of crystals and moon charts and social justice. And back home… Read More ›

• Weird scenes inside the gold mines

  By Bill Pearse on March 7, 2021 • ( 34 )

  

  There was a time life was so sweet we couldn’t afford to sleep or miss any of it. We stayed up all night for the drama of it. It was like that for our kids and I wanted to feel that again, if only for one night.

• It comes in like a lion

  By Bill Pearse on February 28, 2021 • ( 25 )

  

  I guess books remind us that one person’s experience could speak for thousands and we could share some intimacy with strangers, make the world a smaller place.

• The comfort in patterns

  By Bill Pearse on February 27, 2021 • ( 19 )

  

  We were getting near the end of it though the news warned of a fourth wave. And I’d been off work for a month now which seemed great from a distance but got strange the more I got inside of… Read More ›

• The song of myself is a crude souvenir

  By Bill Pearse on February 17, 2021 • ( 23 )

  

  The most precious things we keep hold meaning for only us, and it’s those things we surround ourselves with as time takes all the rest.