On Reading Wordsworth's "Mutability"

From gray the writer siphons black
With white to scent his words.
Ochre strokes burn beneath
His throbbing pen point,
Speckling the dots of his eyes
That castle the characters in cataracts.
And further down the page
His fountain falls to float, as upon the
Granular sheet laps blood.
Caught in the wake of words,
I tread the red ebb of thoughts
That read on past his son’s
Son’s last sunrise seen,
And bleed verse from vein
That in vain disperse.
My words’ worth with
Wordsworth’s mingle,
And dissolve,
And drown.

Chris Malmberg is a strikingly handsome English major at Wenatchee Valley College. En route to the glories of wealth and sugarplum joy, he plans to avoid all Jabberwocks and Jubjub birds and make every day a frabjous day.