L.M. Montgomery Found Poem Featured in Poet Tree Town 2026

Poet Tree Town A2 has been celebrating National Poetry Month by displaying original poems from writers with a connection to Washtenaw County, Michigan in storefront windows of downtown businesses in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. I graduated from the University of Michigan, which is located in Ann Arbor, way back in 2011 and feel very fortunate to have been invited to be part of this community-based poetry initiative. My L.M. Montgomery found poem “On the Forest Path” has been displayed at indie bookshop Booksweet all month. The poem was written using a paragraph from ‘Emily of New Moon.’ If you’re headed to Ann Arbor or Ypsi in the next few days, there’s still time to see scads of original poetry!

Here is the paragraph I used to write “On the Forest Path” with the words I selected in red:

“The other poem was long and I wrote it on a letter-bill. It is called The Monark of the Forest. The Monark is the big birch in Lofty John’s bush. I love that bush so much it hurts. Do you understand that kind of hurting. Ilse likes it too and we play there most of the time when we are not at the Tansy Patch. We have three paths in it. We call them the To-day Road, the Yesterday Road and the To-morrow Road. The To-day Road is by the brook and we call it that because it is lovely now. The Yesterday Road is out in the stumps where Lofty John cut some trees down and we call it that because it used to be lovely. The To-morrow Road is just a tiny path in the maple clearing and we call it that because it is going to be lovely some day, when the maples grow bigger. But oh Father dear I haven’t forgotten the dear old trees down home. I always think of them after I go to bed. But I am happy here. It isn’t wrong to be happy, is it Father. Aunt Elizabeth says I got over being homesick very quick but I am often homesick inside. I have got akwanted with Lofty John. Ilse is a great friend of his and often goes there to watch him working in his carpenter shop. He says he has made enough ladders to get to heaven without the priest but that is just his joke. He is really a very devowt Catholic and goes to the chapel at White Cross every Sunday. I go with Ilse though perhaps I ought not to when he is an enemy of my family. He is of stately baring and refined manners—very sivil to me but I don’t always like him. When I ask him a serius question he always winks over my head when he ansers. That is insulting. Of course I never ask any questions on relijus subjects but Ilse does. She likes him but she says he would burn us all at the stake if he had the power. She asked him right out if he wouldn’t and he winked at me and said Oh, we wouldn’t burn nice pretty little Protestants like you. We would only burn the old ugly ones. That was a frivellus reply. Mrs. Lofty John is a nice woman and not at all proud. She looks just like a little rosy rinkled apple.