Sanctuary, Elizabeth Park Poem by William F Dougherty

Visitors search my park like a memory,
Ransacking my old bushes for tropes,
Exegetes of themes, annoying the ferns,
Fluttering ducks from the complacent pond,
Searching for signs, for carved adagia
Growing marmoreally wise under cedars,
Never suspecting a vigilant toad, belly
Puffing beneath his nubby drapery,
Fixing black hairpin eyes on circling whines,
Tightening his mind's trap, waiting
For purple light to dissolve the zealots,
Holding his secret, triggered tongue.

[Pub. In The Wallace Stevens Journal, Vol.23, Number 2, pg.197.]