O Canada Girls

(Album: The Green World - 2000)

2, and

And if I did not dream, who would you be?
And if you did not dream, who would I be?
Yes, there is gold in this mountain
This they cannot mine
Tell me who they need it for
I'll tell you now, they need me more

O Canada girls
I have seen you in your sweaters
In the late-night sun at Winnipeg
Growing up with friends, and so unhurried
With your secrets, I believe
Kept in the longer sleeve
Oh, girls

Highways seen from hotel windows
Pumping highway blood
If I say they run from fear
Are things much different standing here?

O Canada girls
When I saw the geese flying north
I remembered the friends of my vision
And a sense I had of other wings
Like faith, light threaded through a psalm
Like our boys fleeing Vietnam
Oh, girls

If I drove up 87
Up past Montreal
Following the bluest veins
Following through icy rains
Would I emerge in the present
And know just where to begin?
I'm so sick of forgetting myself to remember who I am
And you say, yeah, but why so cold, and so Canadian?
Well, I guess it's gotta feel like some exodus
And if I succeed, well, there will be more of us
And if I don't, well, I don't really know

Girls who have found our unsung nation
Where we left so much land to itself
That everyone had her own mountain
Well, if you think of this girl and the dreams that made her
Write your secrets on hornet-nest paper
And blow it high across the border
'Cause if you did not dream, who would I be?
And if I did not dream, who would you be?