The theme at Quarrtsiluni the last few weeks has been "Finding Home," and the editors have published some tremendous work. Like The Homeless Life, a musing on monasticism by Soen Joen of One Robe, One Bowl:

I prepared for "homelessness" literally. I pared a lifetime of books, clothes, pictures, school things, junk, and letters down to two boxes I left at my parents' house in the States. I brought a small box of Korean language texts and Buddhist scriptures with me to Korea, along with one pair of pants, several shirts, a sweater and a winter nun's robe. Then I showed up at my teacher's temple...

Or Zooming Into Home, by Beth of The Cassandra Pages:

The traveler's trajectory is so privileged: a line between two points, this stop an insignificant, momentary deviation. But for the locals, this place is a zoom with a final thud, as the map tack goes in to stay. A mile away from the exit, life is lived not on a vector between distant places, but in circles that bring us back again and again to that specific spot we call "home"...

There's so much that I could link to: Natalie's visual poem, Trix's marriage of image and words about Union Station, Dale's musings on home and roads and the familiar that kicked the whole theme off. Maybe it's not surprising that we generated so much good work, given the theme's resonance. Sense of place, finding home, roots and wings: for whom among us do these not loom large?

Home is a major motif in my writing, so when the editors announced the theme, I sent a handful of poems their way. To my delight, they published one fairly early: Home Body. And now they've posted another: Visit. The timing is fortuitous; the poem was written after one of my father's winter visits to the Berkshires, and he's preparing now for this year's iteration -- I pick him up at the airport tomorrow.

I'm honored to be in such fine company. Read all the "Finding Home" posts here.

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