I am delighted to be able to share the news that one of my poems, "The Permeable World" (which first appeared in Waiting to Unfold, Phoenicia, 2013) has been reprinted in a wonderful anthology -- The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home, edited by Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, and Pamela Mittlefehldt, published by Holy Cow! Press.

I've reviewed Holy Cow! titles here before -- both as a poet and as a rabbi, I turn frequently to Beloved on the Earth: 150 poems of grief and gratitude, which I wrote about back in spring of 2012.

When I saw the call for submissions to this anthology on home, I knew I wanted to be a part of it (if the editors were so inclined.) Home, the meaning of home, finding home, making home -- I think that all of these are central to my poetry, as well as to my spiritual life.

Home. Is it a place or a face? An address or a state of mind? Shelter or prison? Hearth or horizon? ...Home is not static. It is a verb, as well as a noun, a description as well as a destination. Home is a dialectic, an oxymoron. Implicit in the grounding promised by the idea of home is the syncopated counterpoint of yearning -- a longing to flee as well as an ache to return.

That's from the introduction, written by co-editor Pamela Mittlefehldt.

The anthology is, of course, beautifully printed and put-together. And in its pages are poems by some poets whose work I already knew -- Marge Piercy, Jane Yolen, Naomi Shihab Nye -- as well as many poets whose work is not yet known to me; new poetic worlds to discover.

I love Laura Hansen's "What Holds Me" -- "What holds me together is this house / two steps up from the shore of the river, / the closets filled to overflowing / with old rubber boots and overcoats..." And Ethna McKiernan's "Dear God of H____" -- "Rain down, oh rain down, you desolate / blessed God of homelessness..." And Margaret Hasse's "Prairie World and Wanderer" -- "At one end of a tunneled corridor / we took naps, once finding where a deer // had tamped a sleeping space, still warm." And Miriam Weinstein's "Home is a complete sentence" -- "Will you complete the precarious walk // across what now looks like a very thin balance beam?"

It's a beautiful collection. I'm glad to be a part of it.

Purchase the anthology directly from Holy Cow! Press at $18 | or from Amazon at $13.64 | or from your local  bookstore.