​Juanito prays at night
When thousands of stars
Fill the summer sky
And holy Earth is still warm
From the hot long days of Castillo.
He sits out there in the darkness
With all the night creatures
And surrenders to the Spirit
While I in my cloister
Wander from room to room
Motionless in my long, sweet
Delicious hours of prayer.
We are on the same journey, he and I,
As the Lord has placed us both in Avila,
This remote and ancient place
In the high rocky countryside.
There is no time here.
Yes, the church bells ring,
And we can hear the bleating of sheep
On the distant hillsides, marking the intervals
Of dawn and twilight,
But we do not count the hours
We count nothing--
Not the stars or the crickets,
Not the words that others wish to speak to us.
We give ourselves to the fragrant breath of the Spirit
In our ears, on our skin, deep,
Deep in the castles of our hearts.
It is the castles, and nothing else, that we count
As we ready ourselves for the labor God has assigned.
We have knealt down to wash each other’s feet,
Cleansed our own hands,
And now, nearly alone, we must clean the sacred House of God.