Teaching the Rocks to Swim: 2012 Attys Entry by Lee Rudolph

Little Prayer: Little Prayer in November

    That I am alive, I thank

    no one in particular;

and yet am thankful, mostly,

although I frame no prayer

    but this one: Creator

    Spirit, as you have come,

come again, even in November,

on these short days, fogbound.

[NOTE ON THE FORM.  The "little prayer" form was invented, I believe, by Paul Goodman; certainly I learned it from him.  A "little prayer" consists of a few (one to three, most often two) quatrains of short lines, often (slant-)rhymed and usually with either the first two or last two lines in each quatrain shorter than the other two, and indented.  The "prayer" in the name of the form is taken seriously but not necessarily literally.]