Robert Francis: ‘Juniper’

 The poet Robert Francis, who spoke for nature’s unloved things, once had a discussion with a farmer about junipers. Francis said that of the common evergreens, the juniper would be the last to break in the wind. The farmer replied that one match could out a juniper, and the poet tried to picture it: a flame-shaped swirl on fire.

Francis said that poets

 

            Are rich in points of view if they are rich

            In anything. The farmer thinks one thing;

            The poet can afford to think all things

            Including what the farmer thinks, thinking

            Around the farmer rather than above him,

            Loving the evergreen the farmer hates,

            And yet not hating him for hating it.

 

The tint of juniper berries is hard to describe. Francis saw the color of metals.

 

            So many colors in so dull a green

            And so many years before I saw them.

 

This is one of the poems I reread. Francis reminds me how little I see when I look around me and how interconnected I am with things I’m quick to view as pests.

• Source: The Voice That is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, edited by Hayden Carruth; New York: Bantam Classics, 1983. “Juniper” is on pp. 234-5.