Author Archives

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

• By Bill Pearse on October 11, 2018 • ( 8 )

  The smell of freshly cut grass in mid-October, summer’s scent, a lover’s fragrance. The clouds more like spring than fall, texture of sheep’s wool. The grass is wet and the cat walks upon it daintily. I spilled half my beer… Read More ›

• By Bill Pearse on October 10, 2018 • ( 29 )

  In the last 24 hours, my blog has been targeted by a bot following attack. At first it seemed like a good thing, all these new followers. They come in batches of five or so every hour, about 200 in… Read More ›

• Song for the undoing

  By Bill Pearse on October 9, 2018 • ( 10 )

  How the days went by like the poets said they would, like wild horses over the hills or worse: indistinct and unnoticed, unremarkable, not lived. Let the days be seen for their own worth, wild as horses, mysterious as the… Read More ›

• By Bill Pearse on October 7, 2018 • ( 14 )

  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 ›

• More animal

  By Bill Pearse on October 6, 2018 • ( 21 )

  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 ›

• Down the hill, from green to black

  By Bill Pearse on October 4, 2018 • ( 12 )

  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 ›

• ‘Cuts you up’

  By Bill Pearse on October 2, 2018 • ( 24 )

  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 ›

• Top down

  By Bill Pearse on September 26, 2018 • ( 7 )

  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 ›

• Song to the dark lands

  By Bill Pearse on September 22, 2018 • ( 19 )

  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 ›

• The soul dies first

  By Bill Pearse on September 20, 2018 • ( 15 )

  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 ›