Self Portrait: Prayer at 37

I want to ask
for nothing

but the little boat
in my heart

lifts its anchor
and sets out;

by nothing
I mean everything:

The ocean
I float in

The life vest
just out of reach.

From Works&Days (Truman State University Press, 2010)

Dean Rader has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture.  His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial Award for a First Book of Poems, and won the 2010 Writer’s League of Texas Poetry Prize. In 2012, “Self Portrait as Dido to Aeneas” was selected by Mark Doty for Best American Poetry. His recent chapbook, Landscape Portrait Figure Form (Omnidawn), was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2013. His newest collection of poems, Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2017.