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.
Lucky man
Another dream where I’m outside the building where I used to work but my badge won’t let me in because I’ve been fired. I took my mom to one of my favorite restaurants but began choking on an olive pit… Read More ›
The grate-covered mineshaft seam
I tried to lose myself in the woods again and came upon the grate-covered mineshaft seam, a grid of rebar set above a dark, mysterious hole. It looked like a mouth in the ground yawning, dripping. I balanced on the… 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 ›
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 ›
Stopping to pay the toll on the road to self
At times there seemed to be so much beauty I couldn’t convey it, and at other times it evaded me for weeks or for months, for what seemed like forever. I sensed a link between my seeing the beauty and… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 