Words can be very powerful… Sometimes, they can send a wave of emotion right through your bones and into you heart, or your mind, or your soul… They can cause instant joy or instant grief, or both at the exact same time… It can happen for no particular reason at all and the feelings you get can stay with you for a moment or a lifetime… While I don’t consider myself a writer, that is why I like to write sometimes... It’s also why I love to read and listen to music… It amazes me that the specific order of a bunch of words can affect a person in such a way… It is art… It is beauty… It is human emotion all wrapped up in a jumble of silly old words…
These words caused just such an impact on me last night as I read them to you before bed… I can’t put my finger on the precise reason they affected me so profoundly, yet maybe that is part of my intrigue… Especially since they are words to a children’s poem… It often seems that words written for children have a more subtle, yet enlightened statement… I woke up this morning and still had the same feeling and could not stop thinking about these words… They did something to me; they changed my thinking, if only for a brief period… Or maybe they have changed me forever… Maybe it is because of my own internal struggle with life… Maybe it is because one of my dearest friends is facing the most difficult situation that there is in this life...
I don’t know…
Maybe I’m not meant to know...
What I do know is that these words are beautiful and I had to share them with you here… With hopes that you will think of them years from now and remember the moment we first read them together…
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 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.
