I can hear the rain
beating on my window pane
And the wind keeps asking when I'm gonna see you again
It's another memory of you, on another night alone
It's another night in the year of the long way home.

Wipers steady as a heartbeat, thunder like a passing train
Headlights picking out weeping willow
Crying on the shoulder again.
It's another night on a back road
Stretched tight like skin on bone
It's another night in the year of the long way home.

It's a long way baby, It's a long way I know
It's a rough road to travel
In the year of the long way home.

When my hands can finally touch you
When you're in my arms to hold
When we're laying together, laughing again
When the stories have all been told
When I reach across the table
Hold your hand inside my own
I can see an end
To the year of the long way home.

I'm crossing blue water
Got a blue moon above
And I'm sailing up harbour
To the girl that I love
Gonna rock her and roll her
In the ocean's own bed
Gonna jump in and swim
Till I'm over my head
In blue water.

I ain't no sailor
I tell you no lie
On dry land I was born
On dry land I will die
But I'd cross any ocean
And I'd sail any sea
If I thought it would
Bring you back
Closer to me
By blue water.

Sometimes I feel like
I'm always at sea
Always pulled by the tides
of the times
In the faces and places
That beckon to me
My heart always knows
its own mind.

It's you an me and a lot of things
That never quite got said
It's you and me and a lot of things
That rattle around in my head.
Chorus
Ah, never mind baby, let's go downtown again
Ah, never mind baby, let's go downtown again

I remember the first time I saw you
You were living just down the hall
I stood there waiting to catch you
Catch you as you started to fall.

Chorus

Never mind about what happened
We can take that in our stride
Never mind about what happened
You will always be my bride.

I remember the last time I saw you
You were walking on Sumach Street
We stood and we talked like strangers
Strangers who happened to meet.

It was Sunday morning in our town
And I sat on my steps and I stared at the ground
And I bowed my head while they shuffled past
All the saints being called to the morning mass

Chorus
And off in the distance there rang a bell
Way off in the distance there rang a bell
And it rang for the saints and the sinners as well
Way off in the distance there rang a bell.

I remember the lessons of Sunday school
And I can't help but think maybe I'm the fool
But I see no sign of a greater plan
Just the joy and the sorrow of my fellow man

Chorus

And here we stand while life rushes past
Between the first breath and the last
And here we stand between East and West
And here we stand between birth and death

I was watching the news the other night
There was a war on the Left
There was a war on the Right
And it's no surprise that it's us or them
It's a long way from heaven to Bethlehem.

Late summer day and my
Love and I went walking
Over hills and fields
we walked, laughing and talking

Came across an old farmhouse
Standing broken and bare
It used to be someone's home
Now no one lives there.

There's a red barn standing
Held together with nails and dust
And a tired old Massey Harris
All wires and rust

Weeds overgrown in a garden
sown with care
It used to be someone's home
Now no one lives there

And through the crack
In the window pane
I hear the sound
Of the falling rain
Another farm being left run down
Another family moved into town

Had a life that they tried to save
But the banks took it all away
Hung a sign on a torn screen door
Nobody lives here no more

They worked their fingers
To the bone
Nothing left
They can call their own
Packed it in under leaden skies
With just the wheat
Waving them goodbye