//------------------------------//
// February 25 [Spring Is Not A Day] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

February 25 

Spring is not a day

Spring is not when we wrap up winter
Not when we push away the snowclouds
Not when we bring the chirpy birds back.

Spring is not when the ice on the ponds is broken
Not when the new seeds are planted
Not when Mom thinks about having just one more foal

Spring is flowers
Bursting forth from the earth to sing to the sun
And to show off their blooms.

Spring is the smell of flowers
And fields dotted with dandelions
All gone to seed

Spring is galloping through the dandelions
And getting covered in downy fluff.
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It's hard to write poetry. It's like a painting and I don't know if anybody else will get it. I know what it means to me, but what does it mean to an audience?  Did I choose the right words?

Poems seem so short and easy, and they're not.

I bet the other students struggle with it, too.

I asked Peggy what she thought, and she said that it was pretty. Then I asked her about what being a human child was like.  She liked to play with her dolls and sometimes she'd steal her brother's GI Joes because not all her dolls had boyfriends and she thought some of them must be lonely.

I thought that was pretty funny, and kind of cute. She asked if we had pony dolls, and I told her that I had a stuffed albatross that my Mom said was very special because albatrosses can fly forever and not land. But that was all. My other toys were clouds and the open sky, and that's all a pegasus really needs.

I tried to sketch out a little poem about my albatross before class, but nothing really came to me that seemed worthy of a poem. I had called her 'Albie' and worn smooth spots in her plush from hugging her and one of her eyes had come off and nopony in our house knew how to sew it back on so I just put a little black dot of paint in place of the missing eye, and one time I threw her off a cloud to see if she could actually fly and then spent the rest of the day looking for her.  But nobody would want to read a poem about that.

Conrad was still in a whimsical mood. First he asked for everyone to turn in their poems because he said it would be distracting if we were thinking about them all class long, and then he read us a poem called Jake Says. I'd never thought about orphans that way, but I guess they are blessed. My Mom wanted me, but some of my friends in school were kind of by mistake. Plus a lot of times you don't really know how a foal's going to turn out.

Then he had me read Falling Up, which really spoke to me. Except for the part about puking; I've never done that from flying, although I kinda came close when I was on the airplane.

He had Trevor read Hug of War which was a good poem for him to read. Trevor has a nice, deep voice. I think that was his way of reacting to what had happened last weekend. Sometimes—

Sometimes a pony or a person really only knows one way to cope with things that are terrible, and maybe for Conrad it's poems. When the weight of the world gets too heavy on my back I can fly because the higher I go the less there is below me. Some ponies make gardens; when Wysteria lost her mother she made the most beautiful flower garden I have ever seen. And there was a stallion on our team who shaped clouds and then set them free over the ocean.

He finished off the day with a poem he said that he had never taught before. He said that I had inspired him.  It was called Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony. I was blushing before he was halfway through with the poem. I know why he wanted to teach it.

So when class was over I went up to his desk and gave him a big hug and thanked him for reading that poem for me. Conrad said it wasn't for me, it was for him. He told me that he used to think that Abigail was a silly little girl who was maybe just a little bit spoiled, but now that he knew me he couldn't imagine what it would be like to not have me in his class.

I was blushing again, and I really didn't know what to say, so I put my hooves up on his chair and kissed him on the cheek and then went out of the class before my fur burned off from embarrassment.

On the way out of the building, I saw Trevor with a group of his friends, and I kind of was a bit hesitant to approach them because they were all big and dark like Trevor, but his face lit up and he crouched down and introduced me to all of them. I said he'd done a beautiful reading of Hug of War, and then all four of his friends just looked at him and then at me and my ears and tail went down 'cause I thought I'd said something wrong. Trevor stepped back and moved his feet apart and I could see his shoulders tense just a little bit.

Then Cedric—who was the biggest one—asked what Hug of War was about, and before I could stop myself I said that it was about hugging not fighting. He asked Trevor if he thought that would work, and my traitor mouth said it would before Trevor could say anything in his defense.

Cedric looked down at me and said I ought to prove it to him. I was really nervous; he was so much bigger than me and when I got close enough for him to grab me there wouldn't be any escaping. But then he crouched down and that was a little better, so I moved in and got up on my hind hooves and bravely wrapped my forelegs around him as best as I could, then bowed my head submissively.

For the longest time, he didn't move at all. The whole hallway got completely quiet; I could barely hear anybody even breathing. Then I heard him mutter 'aw hell,' and he put his arms around me and hugged me back.

When we finally broke our embrace, he admitted that maybe Trevor was on to something after all, and Trevor held out his arms. Cedric gave him a flat look and told him not to push his luck, then punched him in the shoulder, but not too hard.

It was all very strange. I should have thought first before I stuck my muzzle in a band of bachelors; even among humans they have a totally different dynamic than a proper mixed herd or all mares and since I mostly knew girls on campus I wasn't familiar with it.

Just the same it had turned out all right in the end, and I wound up eating dinner with them, too. I hadn't planned to, but Cedric saw me when I was picking out food and asked if I'd join them and even offered to carry my tray for me.

All five of them were actually really nice, and I wished I'd gotten to know them sooner. Cedric said that in the fall, he was a defensive tackle on the football team (which is a good place for a big man; I knew that much about football at least) and Leon who was pretty skinny said he was a wide receiver.

We talked a bit about football, and then they wanted to know what sorts of games we played, so I told them about hoofball (which is kind of like football). Cedric looked at me very seriously and said that it was my sacred duty as an ambassador to introduce Quidditch to ponies.

I didn't know what that was, so he explained it to me, and Leon chimed in too, then Trevor showed me a video of a game on his telephone. Then they started talking about Hogwarts and wanted to know if pony universities had moving staircases and talking pictures and trolls in the basement, and I said that they probably had those at unicorn-only schools.

By the end of dinner, they had all decided that I ought to watch Harry Potter. I told them that I would try but there were so many other things going on that I wanted to do I didn't know when I would have time, and I was already not watching as much Star Trek as I ought to be and had also fallen behind in reading the Bible. I didn't want to make a promise I couldn't keep, but I said that I would watch at least one of them before Spring Break.

I was in a really cheery mood when I went over to DeWaters. Meghan asked how my day had been and I told her about all of Trevor's friends and how nice they'd turned out to be and Harry Potter, and it turned out that Lisa had all the movies.

I hadn't been planning to watch one so quickly, and Lisa said that she had to do homework anyway so tonight wasn't a good night for it. Becky came over and we chatted for a little bit while the tub was filling, and then I got in.

Now that I'd been in a real hot tub, the bathtub just wasn't as nice. Meghan wouldn't get in with me, even though I told her she could, because she said it would just be too crowded. She was probably right, but it made it kind of lonely, even with her right there sitting on the toilet and talking to me.

But after I got out, she wanted to groom me again, and that helped make up for the lack of bonding in the bathtub. It was so relaxing having her brush out my coat I wound up falling asleep on her bed.