Author: James A. Pearson

Imagineif all you had to doto be beautiful was to let the wind dance you where you stand as you grow into the only shapeyou ever had. Here’s the little tree that helped inspire this poem: This little poem is about a shivering little tree near the top of a mountain. But it’s also about… Continue reading Let the Wind

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, but nothing else fit. Reading it now, I love that it stops where it does. That it doesn’t try to… Continue reading A poem about life’s fearsome autumns (and surviving them)

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 if or how I was going to share it. But then today the New York Times published this article: Birds… Continue reading Look to the Sky

When Elizabeth and I were planning our wedding ceremony we wanted to acknowledge the uncertainty we were stepping into—the unknowable decades ahead, the mysterious ways we’d both change, the inevitable seasons of exile and loss right alongside those of connection and joy. So we decided to say a second set of vows. We called them… Continue reading Vows to the Mystery

Don’t try to give meall of yourself—as if you would, as if the wilderness that bears your namewas yours to give. Instead let’s live like mountains: two worlds rooted together but each cutting our own shapeinto the changing sky. I’ll be the one to see you radiant in the morning light, and to watch as… Continue reading The Space Between Us

Sometimes you need to hidefrom everything you’ve promised to become, so you can find the first promise:the one you and the soft worldsang to each other down beneath the tall bushesalong the old stream bed,back when nobody knew exactly where you were,before the personeveryone needed you to belearned to find you even there. That place… Continue reading The First Promise

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 shut downthe aqueducts of wonder. How quickly I abandon my enchantment, like it’sa grenade about to bloom or a great eyeopening. Because really I know that the shape of… Continue reading Permission to Lose Interest