Poem: Listening to the Wisdom of a Statue:
An Ode to Chief Niwot

Chief Niwot

When we stopped listening to the crickets ,
Lullabying us to sleep in the summer,

And the birds,
Singing us awake in the winter,

We missed listening to our hearts beating,
And telling us to love,
All of the time.

I began to cry realizing how much of Boulder and America’s natural beauty and clean water has been lost to the short term thinking of putting corporate profits above human health. In Boulder there are uranium mining tailings by the library and fifty tons of nuclear waste that was dumped on Valmont Butte in the middle of the night. Valmont Butte used to be a sacred area for Chief Niwot’s people.

I thought to myself that if only we could get back to our souls, spirits and the earth, we would be healthy again. And that is when this poem came to me.