READING HENRY JAMES

It's summer reading time
watching golf matches
on the tall greensward grass
the August dog day sun
passes over the hammock
reviewing Henry James's dialogue
in his "The Golden Bowl"
at my side of high toned fiction
with the bridal fever
back at Eaton Square
with Adam Verver,
and the Italian Prince
always at liberties peril
aware of his pivotal poverty
and Maggie's free fervor
in this paradoxical diction
with irony as the language
of its juror's word source,
all the miracles evidently
lost in love's infidelity
on its own obstacle course.