When I Set the Sweetgrass Down

By Will Falk

Many poets write about the natural world - few poets write while acting directly to defend the natural world like environmental activist and attorney Will Falk does in When I Set the Sweetgrass Down. The natural w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayfarer Books
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781956368536

Will Falk

Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will's work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance.Will graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and practiced as a public defender in Kenosha, WI. He left the public defender office to pursue frontline environmental activism. So far, activism has taken him to the Unist'ot'en Camp - an indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet'suwet'en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i, to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin, and to Thacker Pass in northern Nevada where Will is trying to stop an open pit lithium mine from destroying a beautiful mountain pass..His writing has been published by CounterPunch, Earth Island Journal, CATALYST Magazine, Whole Terrain, Dark Mountain Project, the San Diego Free Press, and The Wayfarer among others. His first book How Dams Fall was published in August, 2019 by Homebound Publications.

Book preview

WHEN I SET THE SWEETGRASS DOWN

Too often, these days,

I cannot make the sweetgrass meet the flame.

The fragrance is a borrowed prayer, anyway.

My ancestors fallen,

over a continent and an ocean away,

forgot how. Or, maybe

never knowing my great grandmothers,

I lost them, too.

And, neither Bridget, Christ, the Creator,

or even a common ghost ever answers.

Oh, yes, I constantly look to the heavens.

But, the moon is too far to hear.

The stars too beautiful to care.

And, the sun? Well, he’s too busy

keeping everyone alive.

It’s better to look to your friends.

So, I do and, on the other side of the glass,

a mother bear ignores the thorns

and shakes blackberries out for her