BY THE CHARLES RIVER

Assailed by doubts
and plausible words
for my own spiral notebook
carrying my term papers
after class on my thesis
with a skeptical pen
held on a rhetorical wish
to have the world be blank
on my metamorphosis slate
to be able to be composed,
impassive and diminished
on the precipice of success
after the abyss of exams
the sun harvests its noonday
as a poet rambles on
drawing portraits
under a college wellspring
in a book of knowledge's despair
with red eyes sighting proverbs
to wish my delivering impressions
will translate into a poem
when sitting alone on a park bench
along the Charles River
as Robert Lowell strolls by
on his way up to Beacon Hill
thanking him for his last book
"Imitations"
and talking about Baudelaire.