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 ›
sentimentality
What was left
What was left in Charlotte’s bowl wasn’t worth saving. But I ate it on principle, so it wouldn’t go to waste. And there was an analogy in that, to going back to my hometown for our annual visit, gumming the… Read More ›
Frost circus, Portland
Peeling potatoes I took off my finger tip and imagined a piece of it there among the red bliss skins in the sink, something small and pink you’d find on a beach. But it got me out of cooking, and… Read More ›
Refraction (- – – — — — – – -)
Charlotte and I tried to play Scrabble but got frustrated, and dumped all the tiles back in the box. The best we came up with was Mosaic and Pirana, Pirana hers, not exactly right, needing an H or a symbol… Read More ›
Ham on rye
In the lobby at the recreational cannabis dispensary they were putting up a Christmas tree, and in the shop where a sign says Enter Here and Pay Here everyone looked confused, and I asked about the CBD vs. THC combination,… Read More ›
Song for the undoing
How the days went by like the poets said they would, like wild horses over the hills or worse: indistinct and unnoticed, unremarkable, not lived. Let the days be seen for their own worth, wild as horses, mysterious as the… Read More ›
Twilight September
In the late afternoon shadows, by the underlit leaves, near a tree bent by the weight of its own fruit…in the breeze between summer and fall: there, in the crook of a bush by a rock I spied a colored… Read More ›
That last Sunday in Prague
Brad said he was getting up at 5 to photograph the Charles Bridge. That time of day, it’s only the serious photographers out and the drunks. He described scenes of people on their sides getting sick, some passed out, unclear… Read More ›
The day the rain stopped
The last rain fell on July 10. They were saying that was it, it would be a long time before it came back. When the rain ends in Seattle it’s like time stops—and when it returns it’s like an old… Read More ›
They know it’s time to go
After 89 days without a good rain it was definitive it would come back Sunday. We were gearing up for the first fire of the season, a stew, some red wine, music. We’d move the patio furniture to the garage,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 