R. T. Sedgwick's Poetry Page

Note:Cover image for "Sand Castles" is currently unavailable

Sand Castles
Young,
the boys romped
near water’s edge

Their mother,
bright towel,
one-piece bathing suit
straps unsnapped,
well-rounded tan

We built rambling
sand castles,
ornate fairy tale towers,
drizzled wet sand
Chianti candles

When the tide turned,
each wave lapped
further, hungry lips
devouring our castle,
little by little,
like a cancer

A tower here, a tower
there, we didn’t know
some distant moon
was dragging another
hungry tide
across the shores
of her body
so beautiful,
that she, too
would soon
disintegrate,
tower
by tower
R. T. Sedgwick




The Red Crayon
R. T. Sedgwick
©2008. All rights reserved

The Amish are coming! The Amish are coming! We’ve heard it before, we’ll hear it again, but they never do. They stick together in their farmlands surrounding Topeka and Shipshewana. This is Rome City, they’ll never come here.

We see them in their buggies on narrow country roads—bearded men in grays and blacks, broad-brimmed hats, reins in hands, small sons at their sides, dressed the same, but no beards. Amish men must be married to earn a beard. In the backs of the buggies, the wives, mostly in grays with hints of muted colors—lavenders, forest greens, their daughters by their sides looking much the same, hook-and-eye fasteners, matching bonnets, rosy cheeks, no make-up.

They eat the seven sweets and sours—pickled eggs, sour kraut, apple butter, chow-chow, cole slaw, apple dumplings and shoofly pie. They gather on Sundays in one of their barns—Miller’s, Yoder’s, Bontrager’s, Schmucker’s or Zooks—for worship, corn-husking or quilting bees. When their sons and daughters are old enough to court one another, they are allowed to ‘bundle’, which, we know, means to sleep in one bed—wrapped separately in two Amish quilts and when one of their sons gets married, they all come together and in a single day raise a house for the new bride and groom on the father’s farm. Yes, we know their ways—they are different over there in Topeka and Shipshewana.

Then one day the Amish came. A family moved into a small house way beyond town, but just inside the county line. All summer long, the townsfolk talked of an Amish boy starting school in Rome City, come September. I, too, would be starting first grade.

The first day of school, the teacher said to the class, “Ray Miller is Amish, he is no different from anyone else.” But we knew better. He wore gray shirts and baggy black pants with suspenders and he had an Amish haircut. We all knew that Amish mothers cut their children’s hair by placing a bowl over their head and cutting around the bottom. Ray had one of those ugly haircuts and it made him look funny.

We called him Ray Amish, and at recess we’d gather around him and say, “Ray Amish, Ray Amish, can you speak Amish?” and he would reply, “Amish, Amish, Amish.” We would laugh and then go about our playing, pretty much ignoring Ray.

Ray’s desk was exactly across the aisle from mine. Everyone, except Ray, had a new box of crayons with the eight standard colors—red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, brown and black. When it was time to color, Miss Kessler placed her big box of broken crayons on Ray’s desk. It represented her collection of old broken crayons over many years of teaching and it contained not only the basic eight colors, but colors like yellow-orange, blue-green, pink and gray and even white! I thought this was a little unfair, but the teacher explained, “Ray’s parents can’t afford to buy new crayons.”

I always wanted to use more colors than just the basic eight, and since I could easily reach across the aisle, I would occasionally ‘borrow’ one of the exotic colors from the box on Ray’s desk. Ray never said anything, but I could tell he didn’t like it.

One day I wanted a yellow-green crayon to color the new leaves sprouting on a mimeographed willow tree the teacher had handed out. There was only one yellow-green crayon in Ray’s box. Ray and I both grabbed it and neither of us were about to let go. I was just a little bit bigger and stronger than Ray. The tugging went on for a while and escalated. I gave a quick jerk, pulling Ray out of his seat and both he and the crayon box went crashing to the floor.

Miss Kessler ran over, picked up Ray, and began brushing him off. He was crying and I was clutching the yellow-green crayon. She grabbed my right arm—she was already holding Ray’s left—and pulled us both up to the front of the classroom, turning us to face the rest of the 35 kids. Seventy eyes were staring right at me. The classroom was over-crowded, since it contained all of first grade and half of second grade. The worst part for me was that my sister, Virginia, was in the second grade and her stare was burning right through me. My face must have looked like a pink crayon.

The focus was all on me. I had become the first statistic in an Amish incident. How could this happen to me, and especially in front of my sister. There would be no way that I could keep this a secret from Mom and Dad. Ray stopped crying and Miss Kessler said, “Bobby, I want you to shake hands with Ray and apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, as I stood there trembling, shaking his hand.

“Louder!”

“I’m sorry,” I shouted.

“That’s better,” said Miss Kessler, then added, “I ought to make you kiss him.”

My pink crayon face became the red crayon!

That night at the dinner table, Virginia told the entire story, but by dessert time all had been forgiven and we joked as Mom served her homemade apple dumplings that we were about to eat Amish food.