Coming true

Cool today, overcast with a wind. It has been cool all week, really, but the blazing sun hides that. Today it feels like fall. I am wearing a red silk top with long kimono sleeves. The wind blows and flaps them like prayer flags. The trees are wearing prayer flags, and some of the prayers are flying through the air.

I am reading the Torah with a modern commentary � the great earlier commentaries (Rashi, Ibn Ezra) are often too thick for me. I�m just getting started, only up to the flood. Reading of Enoch (who �walked with God� and �God took him�) I learn that Moses, legend says, died of the kiss of God. I did not know that, but having had Moses on the mountaintop in my heart lately, it does not surprise me. Rather, it�s one of those �ah,� moments, of hearing something unknown that drops into the hole in the known. (Note to self: a belated epigram to �Moses on the mountaintop� may be in order.)

Just back from Winnipeg International Writers Festival, which was amazing. Except � I stepped on this nest of bumblebees, just hours before I was scheduled to give a reading that included a poem about stepping on a nest of bumblebees. I wish someone had told me that everything we write comes true.