BUSH
Warms thieves.
.
For delay.
.
Feeds on balls, candy wrappers, leaves.
See: Hoover Bush
.
For confusions. Fists. Bursts. An argument at the knees.
.
Keeps bees.
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DO NOT PRUNE
.
Not to be confused with short trees.
Should be wider than tall.
Its many tongues and shallow roots
produce particularly high-pitched songs.
.
Questions:
1. Can you eat the berries?
2. Why does it bud in winter?
3. Is it truly jolly or is it jealous?
.
Outlets:
Increasing. Once seen only in backrows
of nurseries, now available in dollar stores.
In groceries, next to pineapple. By mail.
Think of opening a used bush lot in Elyria.
.
Buy 1
Get 3 moles free.
.
As a memorial.
The Alice B. Gamboe Bush.
The Bush National Forest.
Hides weak legs, soil scars,
headstones. But cranky.
.
For protection against small losses.
A bush at Gila Bend
caught my uncle in a duststorm.
A Fairview Avenue bush
caught my report card.
Cowcatcher.
Stops babies rolling into the sea.
Plant a bush at each door and keep
your house at home.
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NEVER PRUNE
.
Genesis of.
.
Religion of.
Burns when frightened.
Likes stutterers.
.
Loyalty of.
In 1956 a bush ambled from Moroni, Utah, to Still-
water Florida in pursuit of its owner who retired.
When interviewed in Missouri is reported to have said:
“People along the way have been wonderful, wonderful!”
It shames us. Have we lost the habit of travelling with
bushes? Your great grandmother took a rosebush west
in a wagon. But you’ve never taken your lilac for even
a Sunday drive.
.
The Nancy Drew Bush.
Her finger to her mouth, the old, kidnapped lady
in the wheelchair is whispering to the slim titian-haired
girl on the other side of the hedge.
See: As a rendezvous for undisclosed persons.
See: Bridal Bush in Wales.
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NEVER TAKE A LOAN FROM A BUSH
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Famous Bushes in History.
Plymouth Bush
Edgar Allan Bush
The Liberty Bush
.
The Bush in Opera.
.
In Literature.
There was a man and he wasn’t very wise
and he jumped into a bramble bush and
scratched out both his eyes. In the next
verse he gets them back again.
But see: Boscophobia
.
Beauty and the Bush.
Someone thought she’d never seen a poem
as lovely as a bush, but we don’t remember
her name.
.
False Tales.
They do not spread rumors and uprisings.
They do not trip trees.
They do not deceive migrations.
If you break a branch you will not turn
into a hunchback.
Such myths are unkind and have done
little to promote understanding
between the bush and others.
.
Here you go round the mulberry bush.
It’s hard to tell when you’re done.
.
Fifty Years Ago Today: The Outbreak of the Bush War
Within three weeks a cessation of most hostilities.
Old campaigners can still be seen along sidewalks.
The Begging Bush: A National Problem.
‘
Interview With Oldest Living Bush
Q: Are you tired?
A: Bushed.
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DO NOT CALL SHRUB
.
Offers Asylum
To snow.
To deserters.
To small librarians.
.
Watcher.
.
Worries windows.
.
Outpost.
.
Even one is a conclusion.
.
Uproot it: there’s
praise from the grass
blame from the wind.
SERIAL
I figure four times, you make it five
that we’ve been married.
The ceremonies shorten. For the first
my father chopped a branch of apple tree
and made an indoor bower where we stood,
me in white, you in terror
before the Justice of the Peace we hired
from the phone book, and your uneasy kin.
The next rites went unwitnessed.
Faithless in small ways, if faithful in large,
we’d rupture quickly, you’d mend fast,
I in a longer siege of silence.
We’d recommit with fewer words.
Learning to forgive you
began my own atonement.
I thought we would survive,
but without love.
That we survived was love.
