We dropped down into Denver, the lights below, the wisps of cloud and snow, a funny time of year to visit. A time you wouldn’t unless you had to, the passing of my brother-in-law Chip, a celebration of life at… Read More ›
prose
Sunday night with the tree
And I wondered what it thought of all this ornamentation and this fuss: this cruel ending.
Their home
This is where they’d started their family, when it was their home.
Wit’s End, Washington
In the mornings it’s so dark I just lay in the den watching constellations and listening to the clocks tick, thinking any day now I’ll start work. I read about portmanteau words like brunch, Brexit, and Microsoft. The word psionics,… Read More ›
The last Sunday in September
The drive from Portland to Seattle on a Sunday morning in early fall. Fog lifting, leaves changing, the look of the clouds. Later how the fire consolidated down to a few logs glowing red. The pink in the western sky… Read More ›
Song for late summer
The kids take pictures of me napping at unflattering angles. The first colors of fall start along the highway: the pink-purple fireweed against the green, the coming yellows and browns. Those black spruces leaning in the muskeg, long patches of… Read More ›
A fair way to go
It is the hour of 4, and the light is best for where I sit on the chaise-lounge, beside the scabby hot tub that’s been dry all summer. The hot tub is kaput because the large fir popped up the… Read More ›
How the house felt after the kids left for summer camp
Outside it was warm and the lupine stalks were bending down, some on their faces like mollusks gumming the ground but not making it very far, frozen mid-suck. The dog smelled bad, a telltale bad like she’d rubbed herself in… Read More ›
Hero’s pose
We waited and waited but it didn’t seem like the marine layer would ever burn off. Lily had a date with a boy we hadn’t met named Colin, and I texted her to come outside so we could talk. And… Read More ›
The long descent through the quarry
I got down on my hands and knees in the shower with a toothbrush and some baking soda paste. The web site said if the drain had a musty smell that was mold, but if it was more like a… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 