Author: James A. Pearson

Mary Oliver died one year ago today. I think Wild Geese might have been the first poem that spoke to my adult self. Not that my adult self knew what to do with it. But…

On Saturday some friends and I marked the winter solstice together. We met just before sunset in a local forest, with the darkening waters of the Salish Sea just visible through the trees. Winter was…

This little poem is about a shivering little tree near the top of a mountain (see a video of the actual tree below). But it’s also about giving yourself a break. There were taller trees…

When I first wrote this poem I thought it would be the beginning of a longer piece, something with more of a redemptive arc. I tried and tried to find the rest of the poem,…

I wrote this poem about a month ago while watching the sky one evening. It was based mostly on an intuition and a gathering sadness about all we’re losing in the world. I wasn’t sure…

Think back to the very beginning of something you were excited about. Maybe you’d just gotten a great new job, or started dating someone you were really interested in. Or maybe it was a new…

This is the poem I wrote for my wedding. I spent months on it. And on Saturday I finally got to see it do its work in the world when we used it to open…

This is a poem of permission. A lot of people wish they could push pause for a little while, but they’re afraid to show any uncertainty about the life they’ve constructed for themselves. They’re afraid…

Looking up through the windshield atdark wings and a white headcrossing high above I-5. “Just a seagull,” I hear myself say—permission to lose interest, permission to close downthe aqueducts of wonder. How quickly I abandon…