My Wife Prays

She stands in a corner and sighs;
Closing her eyes,
My wife prays.

I listen to the silence
As her lips move without sound,
As she sways

Back and forth slightly. Her prayer
Transforms this room with its radiance, its halo
And its haze:

A cave where pious scholars unravel secrets
Of the hidden Torah; a lens through which
Angels gaze

To ponder the deeds we mortals do;
A promontory where a warrior
Bravely slays

A fire-breathing leviathan with six scaled wings;
A garden full of mazes in which an
Infant plays

With an adder and a cobra in each hand, and laughs.
Watching her pray, I entreat God, that
All my days

Be worthy of a footnote
In the prayer-book my wife holds
As she prays.

Yakov Azriel recently published his first full-length collection of poetry, Threads from a Coat of many Colors: Poems on Genesis (Time Being Books). His poems have been published in the US, the UK and Israel.