There's this house on Jefferson...

There's a badly sided house on Jefferson Avenue that I pass going pretty much anywhere to or from home. It is low and multi-gabled with a half-dead crab apple tree blooming in its front yard. I was walking past it the other day on my way nowhere, tripped all over the sidewalk and came up sniffing peppermint that someone planted in the back yard years ago when someone still lived in the house.

So I thought of this poem, rubbed my knee, stood up and got on with things:

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.

(by Shel Silverstein)