Carole Boston Weatherford's "Sidewalk Chalk"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is a little hopscotch down memory lane. Happy reading.

Weatherford is author of over seventy books including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry inspired, she says, by “family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles that center on African American resistance, resilience, remarkability, rejoicing and remembrance.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, July 25th, 2025.
0:13.0	As is often the case on Fridays, today's poem is on the lighter side. It's by Carol Boston Weatherford, and it's called Sidewalk Chalk. As a child, I loved
0:23.8	sidewalk chalk. I don't know that there are too many children who don't, but as a parent, I have to
0:31.4	confess that I sometimes find it a nuisance. Not the drawings themselves, as much as the cleanup, the little broken bits of chalk
0:40.4	that get left out in the rain and you find them the next day. These shriveled little lumps
0:47.9	your former investment in summertime fun. So I'm grateful for poems like these that help me reorient to that childlike mindset,
0:59.8	the truly limitless world that a couple of pieces of sidewalk chalk can open up to the imaginative
1:09.3	child.
1:10.2	It also reminds me of this wonderful picture
1:12.4	book, A Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats. The sidewalk chalk is not the star of the show,
1:19.5	but there are a few pages. There's this sequence where Peter, who's trying to learn to whistle
1:25.2	and is frustrated that he hasn't mastered it yet.
1:29.7	He spends a few pages whiling away the afternoon with a piece of chalk,
1:34.7	and he just draws a long line through his neighborhood.
1:40.0	There's something about being able to change or make a tangible impact on the world around you.
1:51.7	In an innocent way, in a non-destructive way, Sidewalk Chalk is a great boon to mankind for offering us that.
2:01.7	Here is the poem.
2:03.8	Sidewalk chalk.
2:07.3	Big and bold now.
2:09.1	Write your name.
2:10.6	Draw an arrow, then take aim at a puffy heart.
2:14.5	Kim loves Kyle.
	...

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