Reading: Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Shel Siverstein (1930-1999) was an American painter, poet and songwriter. I read a sweet little poem about the end of the line.

Where the sidewalk ends
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 we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

He paints a precise picture of the place between the sidewalk and the street first, because these details will pay off later when we see the sidewalk as the obvious metaphor it is. It is a childlike, a playful place with the moon-bird and the crimson bright, and the peppermint wind.

When we realize the existence of the end of the sidewalk, we want to leave ‘this place’ with the black smoke and dark winding street, the dirty asphalt jungle of aimless (urban) life. And when we do so, we walk slowly and in a dignified manner. Just follow the arrows, and you will be saved.

Now the fact that the children draw the chalk arrows, and will have to redraw them because they will wash away, is an interesting turn here. The children “know”, but their knowing (about mortality) is a naive knowing. The “just know” and draw the arrows because they like to draw arrows, not because they are philosophers preoccupied with impending death.