One of the signs of getting older is realizing there’s only one sweater you really need and then sticking to it, hanging it like a coat in the entryway for quick and easy access: and because you happen to be… Read More ›
mid-life crisis
The sweet smell of woodsmoke mixed with ocean spray
I pulled into Portland around sunset, crossed the grated bridge through the city limits, two fingers of light left on the horizon. Hard to keep my eyes on the road with the snow-covered volcanoes on my left, the sky turning… Read More ›
Whether we feel it or not, the earth moves beneath us
It was the first night this year that didn’t fall so hard. If it had been a theater production and a light cue, they changed the fadeout from 30 seconds to 60. Though unseen, hope stirred underground and you could… Read More ›
A hot bath with David Bowie’s last record
At their height the veins in these hands looked like power cords, like ridge lines on the moon pumping blood from the heart to the fingers, swollen blue but now, more summertime worms scarcely seen, dried up, bloodless: there, it… Read More ›
Ballad for a dying bird one Sunday
I cradled the near-dead bird in my palm, it was the size of a chicken egg and felt warm, I could feel it breathing, though it had its eyes closed like it was wincing, fanning the air with its feet,… Read More ›
A day in the life, a life in the day
29 Nov 16: Tuesday, got home from work, really felt like a man, spit in the toilet, regarded my slacks, my pose, thought I should heat the hot tub for later. Realized how petty I was and didn’t care, gloating… Read More ›
As several disturbances head our way
I looked up and my family was gone, lost in the folds of Powell’s bookstore, Portland, the litmosphere they call it, and I wandered the displays sniffing cakes of handmade soaps, glassware designed for gluten-free beer, branded. All the Portlanders… Read More ›
I sat with the same sadness I fell in love with
The buzz of some lawn equipment and jets overhead, when it stops the birds fill in. The hammock between two ponderosa pines on the outskirts of our property, a two-person version that kind of swallows you, I hold my book… Read More ›
Backwards on the carousel
I don’t know the stages of grief but it appears our animals are in one now, some sad acceptance their lives aren’t as good here as they were in Germany. They don’t like their food even though it’s the same… Read More ›
The last of the pulled pork sandwiches
There was a time we used to just sit and watch our kids’ swim lessons at the Y and it was cute and sweet but that time has passed, and the last two days I take my laptop and wait… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 