Day One: What is my favorite poem?

My first day blogging, and already a tough one. I LOVE poetry. I have too many poems that might qualify as favorites. As I went through my books full of Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, and Rudyard Kipling ("If" always reminds me of my grandma), my mind kept going back to a certain childhood favorite- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. It's a wildly popular collection of poems, and it was a wonderful children's book, but as I read the words of the poem, the same words I read two decades ago as a child, I realized the poem is so much more important and marvelous than it once was. You can read it below and hopefully, you'll find your own meaning.

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.