Ice Cream

Here’s the first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter I:

ice cream

dripping off her chin—

the girl with freckles

In 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery published the quintessential Canadian children’s novel Anne of Green Gables. In honour of its 100th anniversary in 2008, specifically, on 18 November, I wrote a set of poems that employed haiku-like moments from the book’s narrative. The result was a 17-verse sequence that I submitted to a 100th anniversary “Green Gables” writing contest—not in Prince Edward Island but in Japan, where the book has a passionate following. My sequence didn’t place, but I tried another Japanese publication, Poetry Nippon, again without luck. Then I tried Modern Haiku. In 2016 I finally landed the sequence with Bacopa Literary Review, published annually by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Florida. You can read the entire sequence, which I titled “Avonlea.” I also made a PowerPoint presentation featuring all these verses, starting with this poem. It also appeared on the Haiku Foundation’s website as the “Per Diem” haiku of the day in March 2020, as part of a theme focusing on unconventional beauty. The poem itself may not stand alone all that well, since it requires the context of knowing it’s from the book, about its namesake character. Cumulatively, I hope the “Avonlea” verses give a sense of who Anne was and what her fictional life was like in late 19th-century Prince Edward Island. I’ve enjoyed watching several television dramatizations of the story. The sequence, including this poem, serves as a sort of character sketch, with a narrative arc from childhood to adulthood. This was an enjoyable sequence to research and write.

—20 May 2025 (previously unpublished)