Little Emily,
Don't leave the place where the sidewalk ends:
Where white daisies bask in the sun;
(Circle, and circle, and circle.)
Before the winding, winding road begins
Where paper dolls with dreamers, run.
Stay on the sidewalk, Emily, don't step too far:
Ignore granny's piercing screams,
(They circle, and circle, and circle so loud.)
And mummy's moonlit tears that drown,
While broken rhymes you softly sing.
All you know is a face in gilded frames
Kept still in perpetual bliss;
(Circle, and circle, and circle, it goes.)
With whom you share the same eyes and face;
Whose life before yours is now yours to live.
The road ahead bends into a roundabout,
And repeats endlessly, the story of that man
(Circle, and circle, and circle.)
Who left the world too soon to see his little girl grow up;
Whose road ended where yours began.
A few years more and you'll start to ask,
"Why does the sidewalk end?"
(Circle, and circle.)
For on the roundabout, no daisies grow:
It just circles, ends, begins.
10 years later, and still she knows,
That place where the sidewalk ends,
But the daisies died in the crimson sun,
(Circle.)
And you step onto the road, where the chase begins:
So run now, little Emily,
Run.
-c.t.
{I don't ever want to know
What lies beyond where the sidewalk ends.}
This poem was inspired by Shel Silverstein's 'Where The Sidewalk Ends', one of my favourite poems, and by '****', CJC's current theatre production.