July 31: Book Club Barbecue, Phil Legler, "Bedstraw"

My book club met tonight.  We read Fannie Flagg's The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion this month.  I liked it.  It wasn't really my cup of chai.  It was a light, funny distraction.  Flagg knows how to create characters that have a life of their own.  Plus, I learned about a part of American history I'd never known before.

We had a barbecue.  Hot dogs and bratwurst.  Fruit salad.  Noodle salad.  Brownies topped with pretzels and caramel.  The weather was perfect.  Seventy degrees and sunny.  In the background, a water fountain bubbling.  Perfect.  The only thing that was missing was my wife.  She had to work tonight.  Book club is usually the only night of the month where we spend a few hours with adults.

Tonight's Phil Legler poem is about love and summer.

Saint Marty needs to get to bed.

Bedstraw

by:  Phil Legler

Like your touch
gone from me, they have already
closed once this morning.

The sleepy field was wet.
Yet now from a bowl of water
slowly the petals open.

And what a curious name
they have.  Imagine the sweetness
if lovers in a grove

lay and slept on them,
opening and closing themselves
in the press of dew.

Bedstraw in the July evening