In the morning on the third day the rain had finally stopped, the fog lifted, and we could see the land around us. I took a walk along a dirt road beneath a canopy of trees that had lost most… Read More ›
Memoir
Mid-autumn snow in the foothills
Overnight the rain turned to snow and in the morning, made the lawns wet and patchy looking, the tree limbs bent back like bow strings. I drove Lily to the Park & Ride then walked down to the lake, remembering… Read More ›
The Famous Golden Larch
I don’t know what it is about me and hats, but I keep losing mine. There was the green Irish cap I got in a small, West Cork town: I wrote the name inside the rim (SKIBBEREEN 12-15) to mark… Read More ›
The Fall of 2015 | 90-day family road trip, UK
We were living in Germany but didn’t have a visa and had to leave for three months, had to leave the Schengen and most of Western Europe: so we decided on the UK because they spoke English there and we… Read More ›
‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’
In the den at night with the flue to the gas fire open it’s so drafty it feels like we’re outside, and Dawn and I wrap ourselves in blankets, play vinyl, and it’s a pain to get up and have… Read More ›
Poppy field in a hollow, Whidbey Island
In the early morning before the sun hits the tops of the trees it’s so quiet on the island it’s like the quiet has its own sound that expands to surround you. Even the clouds appear fixed over the water,… Read More ›
Wednesday’s twilight anthem
The Jupiter’s Beard is fanned-out pornographic in our front yard, exposed to the root. And the grass is so dead, it’s what Gregg Allman’s beard must have looked like before he died, the same gold-straw color, drawn out thick. It’s… Read More ›
Then the rain came
The cat knocked the plastic owl off the patio pot and its head separated from the body and rolled away, then lay in plain sight with the rain coming down, too hard to fix. And in the morning I found… Read More ›
They know it’s time to go
After 89 days without a good rain it was definitive it would come back Sunday. We were gearing up for the first fire of the season, a stew, some red wine, music. We’d move the patio furniture to the garage,… Read More ›
‘Essence of Cessna’ | on success
Thirty-one years ago the film Pretty in Pink came out. We watched it on Netflix but didn’t remember anything: not Andrew McCarthy’s flickering eyes, nor Molly Ringwald’s quivering lips. Nor the scene with the two of them in a library… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 