Sunday Poems - Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends"

I've always loved this poem. It's great for kids, and I was a kid when I started to love it. Then I took a class during my first year of college called "The Performance of Literature." The professor - the eccentric and theatrical Dave Reifsnyder - had me read it to another student like that student was my dying husband. It gave the poem a whole new meaning.

This poem came to mind sometimes during my summer hospital chaplaincy, when I was standing at the bedside of a dying patient or in the waiting room with their grieving family.


Where the Sidewalk Ends
by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson-bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.