And I saw what must have been a camp
for young female Jewish artists
carrying canvases and paints,
wading, in long skirts,
into a field past the community college library.
And when I looked up again from my reading,
they were praying in the high grass,
arms extended before their bodies,
prayer books held toward the sky.

*

In the final hour of daylight, young women
at the Jewish night college in Brooklyn
recite the Afternoon Service—
rocking back and forth in dim-lit stairwells, in alcoves,
in the aisles between library stacks,
in empty chemistry labs. A pause
between day job and evening class.
On their lips, prayers for a good marriage, an A
on an exam.

*

Once, at dawn, decades ago,
I slipped out the yeshiva side door,
descended the steps to the Wailing Wall,
and joined a quorum of men at prayer.
From the room where Bibles and prayer books
are stored when rain cascades
on the Western Wall Plaza,
we could hear a woman’s weeping.
How uncomfortable
her true faith made us feel.