Where the Heart Is: A Celebration of Home - Softcover

Like pentimento, when time begins to reveal an old painting that's been covered by a new one, Where the Heart Is rubs away at our surface notions of home, until we begin to see the more interesting vision beneath. Writing from his death row cell in San Quentin, Jarvis Masters describes his battle with filth and cockroaches as he determinedly makes a concrete box a sanctuary. A housecleaner reveals the gossip that only a home's mess can tell. Ram Dass tells his secret for making a Holiday Inn a home. These poems, essays, and rituals speak to home as a state-of-mind that we can build and return to throughout our lives.

Looking Out My Kitchen Window in Late June
In my Garden, new flies spiral in the sun like small white parachutes against the thick dark vines. The orange trumpet flowers spill over and over the wall. The house is still. The kitchen smells of peaches. Outside: summer, swelling like a wave. For a moment, there is nothing that I want.
-Carolyn Miller