The Red Brick House

The town built a row of houses,
They built it with hay and wooden sticks,
But not the little boy,
He built his house with cement and red bricks.

All the houses looked like they always had for years before,
They looked mild, solemn, and tame and they all looked the same,
But not the red brick house, it looked fiery and wild,
If you saw it, you’d say the little boy’s house looked anything but mild.

“What was the matter with him!”, the rest of the town angrily said,
“Why can’t he do things like the rest of us instead?
Why darn a yellow coat with a red thread?”
Why build a house that looks every shade a flaming red?
There is a cookie-cutter all ready, for everybody to use,
Step into it and we can all call it a happy truce”.
“He’ll come around”, they said, as they built houses of hay and wooden sticks,
But the little boy did not, he went on to build his house of cement and red bricks.

Then came a big, bad storm with the howling wind,
It huffed and puffed and soon all the houses,
They looked like they had all been trimmed.
But not the red brick house that was built with cement and red bricks,
Not the little boy’s house,
It had not fallen for the gusty wind’s old tricks.

As the storm went down,
The little boy’s red brick house stood there, tall and strong,
It always had done its own thing, it would always proudly dwell on,
It would never be prey to the cookie-cutter, it would never be a pawn.