Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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October 7, 2018 (Sunday) In the den with the fruit flies on the couch I lay listening to the tic of the clock, the dog shifting, the sound of a jet outside, and nothing else worth noting. We are each… Read More ›
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More animal
Pouring boiling water down the sink drain to kill the fruit flies. The look of them in the dark as it spills through, this everyday violence. Remembering what my arm looked like when I cut it as a 5-year-old, running… Read More ›
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Down the hill, from green to black
I got the ax out of the chicken coop to split the wood for the first autumn fire. Without ceremony, I hung the lawn chairs in the garage for the season and put away the hammock and lawn furniture. A… Read More ›
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‘Cuts you up’
Lily (who now goes by Lee) and I drove to the Teanaway river valley on the east side of the Cascades, stopping at a Safeway in the small town of Cle Elum for junk food. I didn’t bring the guts… Read More ›
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Top down
On the first foggy morning of late September the daylight cut itself in half and the moon looked full as we drove home from our birthday celebration for Charlotte. We climbed the steps to bed, the three of us (Dawn… Read More ›
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Song to the dark lands
When I look through the trees at the park near our house they are all pretty much the same as when we started coming here—like me, a bit older but still the same, mostly unnoticed. And the kids were so… Read More ›
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The soul dies first
At the end of it, the wick is either cut too short or it’s so long, it falls on its side and can’t stand up, won’t light. And so much wax left, in the shape of what remains. This body… Read More ›
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Twilight September
In the late afternoon shadows, by the underlit leaves, near a tree bent by the weight of its own fruit…in the breeze between summer and fall: there, in the crook of a bush by a rock I spied a colored… Read More ›
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Song from a shell
In the icy depths of sleep, in dreams, you held me when I was no one, just myself, a shell You held me at the edges where I could have been anyone, but wasn’t— and in sleep, in dreams, is… Read More ›
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The flavor is in the blood
Any cook will tell you, when you brown meat and rest it on the plate, blood will accumulate there and you always use that blood, or whatever juice comes out, when you put it in the pot. I sat in… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 