Please Don't Photograph Me While I Dine

My eye continues to be captured by butterflies and thistle.

But after interrupting this particular thistle-appreciator with my camera, I was reminded of my own annoyance with people talking on cell phones in restaurants.

The last of the thistle will be gone soon, and the butterflies not too far behind. No real hints of fall in the air yet, at least not during the day, but it's coming.

Thistle ahead

Watching this summer's thistle draw toward a close, I thought of a favorite poem -- and of next summer's growth:


Are flower and seed the same?
What do the great dead say?
Sweet Phoebe, she's my theme:
She sways whenever I sways whenever I sway.
"O love me while I am.
You green thing in my way"
I cried, and the birds came down
And made my song their own.
                   Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind, 1958