Thomas Hornsby Ferril's "Two Rivers": Poem on the Range
In this week's cover story, "Water World," Westword writers explored the South Platte, the river that runs through Denver and is showing new life.
Our favorite spot on the Platte, though, could well be my favorite spot in Denver: the point at Confluence Park where the past and the present come together. While kayakers breeze by and kids frolic in the shadows -- pointing to the Platte's beachhead future -- you can also feel the plaque dedicated to Colorado Poet Laureate Thomas Hornsby Ferril, inscribed with one of his poems:
Two Rivers
wo rivers that were here before there was
A city here still come together: one
Is a mountain river flowing into the prairie;
One is a prairie river flowing toward
The mountains but feeling them and turning back
The way some of the people who came here did.
Most of the time these people hardly seemed
To realize they wanted to be remembered,
Because the mountains told them not to die.
I wasn't here, yet I remember them,
That first night long ago, those wagon people
Who pushed aside enough of the cottonwoods
To build our city where the blueness rested.
They were with me, they told me afterward,
When I stood on a splintered wooden viaduct
Before it changed to steel and I to man.
They told me while I stared down at the water:
If you will stay we will not go away.
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