Sanctuary In Elizabeth Park Poem by William F Dougherty

(For Wallace Stevens)

The scholars stalking first ideas ransack
his park for origins; they frisk each bush
for cryptic tropes and trample ferns to mark
correlatives, perhaps unearth a cache
of adages or orb of opulence
to add to his beguiling arabesques,
those acts of mind, his fictive world. They sense
he's there, a fugitive from asterisks.

An emblematic toad anticipates
that Hartford's purple light will soon congeal
and close the park; then he'll articulate
the prodigies imagined from the real
and decreate the world to civil song:
he bides his breath and holds his triggered tongue.