Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony

Was anyone a fan of Shel Siverstein as a child? I wasn't. Here is why.

Selections from Where the Sidewalk Ends and A light in the Attic were read to us in class, I beleive the third grade, age 8 or 9. His poems were clever and silly, supposed to appeal to children. Being an avid reader, and possibly desiring to please the authorities, I checked the book out at the library.

I only remember one poem now. Flipping through a list of titles, the others only give me a flicker of memory. This poem was "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony".

(Amusingly, while Googling, I found that others apparently had a problem with the poem, too, although I suspect for very different reasons.)

I have no specific love for horses. I knew the limits of what I could ask my parents for and what I could not. I knew what the poem was supposed to mean, that it was just being cynical and exaggerating. I knew the characters weren't real, that it never happened, and that it would never actually happen in real life.

When I finished reading the poem, lying on my stomach on top of my bedspread, I put my face down in my arms and cried.

I know now why I was so upset, but I couldn't articulate it back then. At the time, I wondered, The problem had such a simple solution - why couldn't she just have that pony? Was it really to much to ask? It's not as if she wanted the world! Worse, didn't her parents notice that she was wasting away? Didn't they understand? Didn't they care?

Wasting away.

I believe now that my broken heart was from a fear that I would die, not only without finding whatever I was seeking in life, even if it the simplest of dreams, but also without my desires ever being understood.

Later, my mother came in and asked me what was wrong, since I assumably had a red nose and puffy eyes. I told her it was nothing. I felt incredibly stupid for crying at a book of humorous children's poetry.

What does this have to do with Ana? I'm not sure. It shows how sensitive I am, and how dramatic. It shows I've been hiding my feelings for a long time. It shows my parents were already losing my trust at age 9. It shows my intense, irrational hatred of being embarassed, but also my intense, irrational fear that my dreams would eternally be denied. It showed that, like Abigail's parents, mine didn't understand me either.

You may also notice that the poem involved food - specifically, using food as a comfort. Hmm.

I still have those fears. The people I love never seem to truly understand me - not because they are lacking, but because I am impossible. And whatever it is I'm seeking seems to become harder and harder to find, and each new day is just a reminder of everything I've ever done - and failed to do. I didn't think my dreams were too big to come true, but I'm starting to believe I am too much of a failure to ever reach them. I will always fall.

But I can still dream, and I can try to live in my dreams. My dream is for my outside to match my inside - dreamy, light, pale, a fluttering snowflake, a dandelion seed floating in the breeze. If nobody can understand my dreams, why should I make my dreams something understandable?

Since then, I've learned to hide it when my heart breaks.