Thursday, May 29, 2008

Musings on Sustainable Wisdom

My mind keeps roaming back to a beautiful, simple and brilliant poem by Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends. It is included in one of my favorite worn out meditation type books, Our Land, Ourselves: Readings on People and Place, published by The Trust for Public Land. I was privileged to go to 'farm camp' last year at Knoll Farm, where a couple of the editors and contributors work, live, play and share their love of the land and are helping remind people about our connection to it through their workshops/retreats (my daughter dubbed this farm camp for me) at the Center for Whole Communities in the gorgeous Mad River Valley in Vermont.

I frequently pick up this book of wise words to push back the crazy work-a-day, suburban existence that pulls my connection to what I experienced up there thin. A random reading can bring me back to a place of remembering what is real, what is important and perhaps what is not.

I have a little dry, flat rose from last year's garden crushed in the page where Mr. Silverstein's poem rests. I never get tired of it. I'd like to share it with you today. Extract from it what you will, but I promise if you read it periodically, it will have some effect on you.


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.

Shel Silverstein, 1974


1 comment:

Annie said...

Beautiful post ladies! I shared your blog on mine today. :)