National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month (sign up to receive a poem a day in your e-mail), so I thought I'd take this post to honor poetry. I like poems, haikus, rhymes. Sometimes I may not get the deeper meaning, but I enjoy them nonetheless. I used to write little poems when I was younger, but they were teenage poems - nothing to really write home about.

So, I pulled out the Bible of poetry, at least in my opinion, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I've read these poems so many times since my childhood; the pages are dogeared to mark my favorites. So I share with you the title poem:

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.

And from the hubby who is a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, a poem by Billy Corgan, from Blinking with Fists:

The Follies of Summer

Quicksand, ocean sky
Wondering, don't ask me why or how we got here
We just did
The most eternal sun-drenched kiss is locked in my mind as something I won't miss
Or even try to remember
Summer has come and gone so many times I've lost count
Endless, nameless, marked by time as nothing special
But the warmth is here, you see
In darling soliloquy
Hidden in the costume and fine-boned prose
Under canopies of sheltered light and life
Summer is here and it is all mine

Do you like poetry? Do you have a favorite poet or poem?