At last the smell that was really me came to bare, to fully express itself, as a piece of rotten fruit or uneaten meat, table scraps left to bloom in some dark, neglected space. A smell, an essence, of toxins… Read More ›
nature poetry
The weight that won’t shake
After a week of snow it finally broke, and started to melt and with it sliding off the branches and dripping off the gutters it looked like the sky was crying, the earth collapsing in on itself and with the… Read More ›
Nowhere, slow
The spent tea bag stapled at the top, the icicles dripping on a Saturday afternoon freed from any thought of what time it could be, spread out like a soft cheese with hair unwashed, snow with nowhere to go, nothing… Read More ›
This time on earth
Where does it go, when the hair recedes—and why does it leave? And will I go like that too, without any notice but more a long, slow fade like snow thawing in a field— And are we just that then,… Read More ›
Down the hill, from green to black
I got the ax out of the chicken coop to split the wood for the first autumn fire. Without ceremony, I hung the lawn chairs in the garage for the season and put away the hammock and lawn furniture. A… Read More ›
Song to the dark lands
When I look through the trees at the park near our house they are all pretty much the same as when we started coming here—like me, a bit older but still the same, mostly unnoticed. And the kids were so… Read More ›
One commitment (for August)
In the morning before the sun is up, when the cloud deck makes the light go soft and pale, the grass is the color of straw dried-out and sharp, golden red. The lawn sprinklers wake spitting and cussing, and the… Read More ›
Morning prayer
The grizzled look of a lawn covered in frost and all the tiny diamonds there, a Morse code for sight. Photo credit, Loren Chasse.
The last of the 8 o’clock sunsets
The clouds are dragon tongues, painted Nordic boats and they blow me back to Scotland, to the fall, to shrill winds and leafless trees, to the comfort of wool and soup, smoked fish, and sleep. Now the shrubs are shriveled,… Read More ›
Poem for the first sunny day in Seattle
How the underside of the crow’s wings glowed when it was dusk and the light dropped so slow from the sky a two-hour cue and the spaces between the leaves went from peach to pink, and all about, a tapestry… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 