Sideways snow outside the window, all of us bundled with our gadgets, our books, our friends, the din of soft German going through tunnels, beneath bridges, the ivy, the vines, the limbs cut to the nub: I sit on the train and… Read More ›
Poetry
Blog posts are bread crumbs the birds can’t eat
The look of the sky today started pink but ended gray, and as I went walking I worried, did I have enough to break off to find my way, or would I get lost in the forest and the others with so little,… Read More ›
Love and moss during wartime
Plaintive, silent moss that exists but for a balance between water and light: Can we appreciate it for what it is and ever stop rearranging things?
Morning sky drawn in sidewalk chalk
Passage from Dover to Dunkirk, via Reims, to southern Germany Past the old vicarage down the hill in time for the last of the owls, bending at the bottom through a valley to the lake for disabled anglers — No… Read More ›
Rebirth of a shirt
When the undershirt’s worn out, it’s conformed to its owner and lost all likeness of itself then may it be put in the can and forgotten, to know it’s run its course and can return. Let me not grow nostalgic… Read More ›
They packed the gaps with sand and mud
Old, half-timbered houses with uneven beams buckling and bent into one another like two drunks steadying themselves. Everything on its side, lead pipe handrails caught in their footings, ivy-choked trees. Pale morning birdsong, footpaths leading down the valley ending in… Read More ›
How it looks from the inside of an Edinburgh flat while reading
The owner comes in to take measurements of the sofa bed that’s broken, apologises, says he assumed we’d be out at the museums on a day like this or seeing the town but we’re not; we’ve come all this way… Read More ›
The Table of Contents
Our last morning in Arbroath, the wind and rain have stopped and everything has gone still. I walk the estate in the opposite direction from last time, spot two beasts in the distance, perhaps the same that startled Dawn the… Read More ›
The world of nameless birds
The cemetery birds sing a more soulful tune in the dark of the tree’s last leaves, like ghosts, most pass by unseen, real for just a moment, it seems. And the cemetery rocks look the same as any other stones, the… Read More ›
Anyone at all
When the time comes you have nowhere left to go, go back to sleep and forget about things for sleep is like death and won’t come when it’s called – it’s better to sleep without the weight of dreams and wake… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 