John Neely Bryan cabin still remains in Dallas, Texas
He was the first settler along the banks for the Trinity River and city founder
poem submitted to "Your City" poetry contest, Christopher Delegans, sponsor, April 10, 2026
I was born from tall prairie grass, hope, and open sky, a whisper of wind shaping my grassy fields into place. I remember when only buffalo knew my name, their shadows drifting across my unbroken plain. I felt the Trinity River carve its slow, patient path, its muddy breath cooling my sun-struck skin. Then John Neely Bryan walked my riverbanks, his boots pressing the first human heartbeat into my soil. I watched his cabin rise like a promise, rough-hewn logs catching the dawn’s first fire. Settlers followed, their wagons creaking like old prayers, their wheels etching new stories into my prairie spine. I grew from remote trading post to a thriving crossroads town; even now, my streets are filled with the memory of dust and possibility. The railroad arrived cutting its way through my prairie grasses, its iron rails bringing newcomers and the throbbing of trade. Cotton wagons from nearby prairie towns rolled across my empty shoulders, their burlap scent mingling with Texas bluebonnets and wild sage. I learned to stand tall and proud as decades unfurled, brick by brick, promise by promise, ambition by ambition. Skyscrapers rose like steel-boned giants, their mirrored faces catching constellations in stride. Yet beneath my pavement, the prairie still breathes, its roots humming the old songs through the dark. I carry the Texas heat like a memory—low, steady, eternal— a thrum rising from the earth’s warm spine. And through every century of becoming, I remain what I have always been: I am a child of the prairie, dreaming myself into sky.
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John Neely Bryan cabin still remains in Dallas, Texas