An acrostic solo rengay, first published in Presence #55, June 2016, page 62. The acrostic starts with the title. Not sure why this took me so long, but I started this in July of 2008, wrote the second verse in November 2009, the third in August 2011, and the last three in March of 2013. And here it is now.


in the branches
cold wind
heaving the aspen

after the funeral
even the sky is different

looking down on
Diablo Lake . . .
yellow gusts

landing a trout
a girl I once knew
now a woman

Welcome mat
ends up in the trash heap

laughing again—
cold pizza
heated for dinner