If you have never tried your hand at acrostic poetry, here’s your chance. This triple acrostic has barely been started. but it is revelatory of one of the secrets to acrostic success: start with the end words first. Note also that A, L and Y are easy end-letters for rhymes. (J, Q and U are less so, unless you want to repeat a limited set of words in your poetry.)

In this case the first four end words are Belladonna, pneumonia, begonia, hineyana. That’s an a b b a rhyme scheme, which may or may not lend itself to a Petrarchan sonnet.

I frankly don’t recall whether I ever finished this one. Its color, and the winglike ears of the mournful-eyed pup, suggests the winter holidays, so it grabbed my eye when I was looking through my files.