Author: James A. Pearson

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, to watch as evening’s… 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

Remember that you take it with you. All of it. Even the fuzzyand forgotten parts. It’s all there in the way you breathe now, in the questions you neverwould have thought to ask, in the new sense by which you navigate the world outsideand the world within. The legacy of every momentbeats within you—fifty, eighty,… Continue reading You Take It With You