The smell of the book is the same as memories musty, vague— its only distinction is in itself how it sits there unattended: different memories, different books, all smell the same.
Poetry
A bath one Saturday night
I hadn’t taken a bath in more than a year, never time for a bath, always something else but when you look at the bath when you’re buying the house, the bath seems like such a good idea and it was… Read More ›
That last fall in Arbroath
This time last year we were getting ready to leave Arbroath, Scotland for Halloween in Inverness, at the mouth of the Loch Ness, with much anxiety from the kids on what that would mean for our trick-or-treating plans. We had… Read More ›
On the dead
Every other Saturday the gardeners come, but I will never know all their names. They are in the back now blowing out leaves, tearing out the dead, raking up beds, making it all go away— But the next morning the… Read More ›
Life lessons from dreaming dogs
The dog in her sleep quivered, you would have thought she was dead she looked so still – some replayed scene imagined to make her believe she was somewhere else, living.
Mid-autumn morning
Sun blotted to a smudge, that’s all. No wind, only jets, frogs, clocks: barely a sound when the last leaf falls.
The 87
It’s almost time to go. The body snaps back like the rubber on a slingshot, hangs there limp for what’s next. The clock has a tick too. The cat understands no schedule. The rain has been going all night, it… Read More ›
This is all we have, right now
Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re gone, the way you half-smiled the same as me — the last time we talked on the phone I remember, your stories about the time you were in London too. Maybe every moment is… Read More ›
Some imagine oblivion
Bruised, angry clouds blown from the snouts of beasts with wings, horns and flames, poet plumes made the sky look alive today.
Autumn response
Now the earth breathes in and we with it too, we lie down. In the spring the earth breathes out, the blooms and the blades, the stamens and spores land where they will. But now is the time of repose and response, of reflection: to fall… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 