Poverty Bush

POVERTY BUSH

A classic Aussie
An Outback battler
Of a rough family
Like yours or mine.

Eremophila alternifolia
An Emu Bush, Native
Fuchsier of scrophulus family,
Scrophulariaceae.

Another Eremite
Eremo for desert
Phila for loving
A mad Desert-lover.

Alternifolia for
Its see-saw marginal doors
Of blanking alternate leaves
For saving water space.

It grows like anonymous,
A scrub
In margins of
Poetic consciousness

Where human attention
Shifts to
Flowers of a more
Iconogenic rub

Yet and yet, saving it
As Tarrtjan
Aborigines used it
Well against

Inflammation, and carried it
For any case, if this
Is not boring enough,
As a soporific.


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