Preface To Sidewalks: Where The Sidewalk Ends

(Shel, from his Wikipedia page.)

You have to be around my age to automatically think, when someone says the word "sidewalk," of a book of poems called Where The Sidewalk Ends.  I was very happy when I discovered an actual album of Silverstein reciting & singing the poems that I had loved as a child, but unhappy when I checked it recently to discover that the titular poem is not one of the album's tracks.

In lieu of me reading it to you on tomorrow's show, I'll just share it now, in case you haven't ever read it.  I found a copy of it here.

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.

Hooray!  No poem-reading for me tomorrow!