When you find death or death finds you what is it like? Your cat on the floor, I remember that. The first time you felt something taken from you you treasured and knew from the time of its birth. Because… Read More ›
prose
The secret to our future lies
In the dark corners of the library I am looking for my past. The corners are dark because it is the early 80s and I can barely picture it now. The new library has just opened in the old part… Read More ›
You can never hold back spring
Spring came quick. One day the birds were back and it seemed like life just resumed. Like everyone had been released from a witch’s spell, that’s how it felt. He worked in the yard and dug the heels of his… Read More ›
One small thing
This is the color of November. Mainly gray, with dabs of red and gold. The trees have just enough leaves to remind you they once had more. And so the season bends towards absence. A harvest, a feeling of fullness,… Read More ›
Fall back
It’s the last Sunday in October, dry, and I’ve just torn up the front garden beds and transplanted everything to the back. Like Dawn used to say about our basement in West Seattle, the back of the yard is where… Read More ›
The dead
It’s that desperate time of year when most of the leaves are down and my morning walks are dark and windy. The time of year I took my last solo backpacking trip, last October. I’d quit drinking and the trip… Read More ›
Winter over
The walk was wet, the ground spongey. The leaves on the trees looking desperate, red or gold. He saw himself in those leaves and how they hung on. He sat on a dry rock beneath the trees on the lakeshore… Read More ›
They are still there
Why did I dream about you, after all this time? You were there in a sketch the way you once were. And the two of us were going home together, my place or yours. Yet we were older, there was… Read More ›
Carver
He lay on his back on the sofa like he always did, looking out the window. Birds flocked around the orange berries, limbs flopped over, leaning down. A hearty rain. The grass needing cut. With the pandemic they had gone… Read More ›
Last Saturday night in Wallingford
It is late afternoon on a Saturday in late September, early fall, and it all could be normal again if it weren’t for the masks and jugs of sanitizer in the entryway of the cat cafe here in Wallingford. The… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 