The Bus to Common Center Above my head heaven turns on a whole moon that silvers every sprig of cedar. The hill's skin seems lit from within. Has the earth itself a spirit? Each human, each creature, each tree: a single slow thought of that mind? Easy to believe, come nightfall, that all is one. Shadows blur and blend. The lights below that mingle into fog. Tonight, my drunken friend, I feel that you and I-- as we argue our way through art and sport, women and religion, the shared folly of adolescence, as we close the bars, walk and argue further-- we merely make a smoke obscuring the same light. See, we hold each other's sodden hulks upright. We talked of the Christ, while walking from a bar through the fog to another bar. We talked of the brotherhood of suffering and of our own soft hands and unlined faces. We talked of the Father, the harsh joy or obedience, duty, and of our own meandering existences. Of the Three, I insisted, only the Spirit moved me: the ghost in the rock, the tongue of water, the word air itself speaks from vestments of cumulonimbus. I am of an age to love my eyes and ears and skin, the voluptuous catechism buzzing within. After the bars were closed, the die-hards evicted, the video games left to beep and wink in darkened windows: the bands packed their vans and left the streets to you and me. "Come," you said, "I know a place." And led me up the crumbling stair, flight on flight to a site, you said, of power. Some ancient butt of rock neither wind nor river nor glacier could move, so steep and stony, the city itself parted and passed it by. "Once the wind here blew right through me, opened me up and blasted me to childhood. The semblance of my kin moved and spoke in the trees." you said. "My great-uncle in Day Line captain's finery. His voice was hollow, as from an old speaking tube of oiled brass. My father, patient, speaking slowly, unravelled his world to me as he would unravel a tangled hundred feet of line. "Another time I found myself staring into darkness, as one stares at the darkened ceiling for a while when waking in the night. I went right out of myself to touch each mind in the houses skirting the hill, each insomniac, blue in the light of the late TV movie, each troubled dreamer, here and there, lovers, or a child in the bottomless sleep of innocence. "One night I had a premonition of the birth of my first child. I descended, light-headed. A bus bloomed from the fog, then passed on. Its destination sign said, Common Center. The windows were fogged, opaque; the engine sounds were quickly gone, but it was real, I swear. Though the scheduled runs had ended hours before, it was real as you or I. Think about it. "Now that child is here with my father's nose and my great-uncle's jaw and my temper. It makes me wonder what is ever really lost. The world has succored and hoarded life since it began, some say, with a single spark of light in the primeval ocean. I wonder if we join together more than arm in arm." Tonight I wonder, too. The fog is lifting. Just enough left to smear the streetlamps that emerge one block at a time, 'til all the distant suburbs shine like a second sea of stars beneath us. Surely some power marshals below; the quartz veins glow in the crown of boulders. Your face has lost its beery flush, is serene and self-contained. Something is about to happen: the sky open, fireballs and singing come forth, the lid come off the world and a great shining forth. We tremble in our coats and stare as the light comes, the sun edging the hills east to flood the few tatters of cloud with purple. We walk down into the light. © Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.