The 401 is stopped again

I’m stranded here

Tired and anxious and bored

A red march of tail lights

Dot into the sunset

I’m beginning to believe

I may never get home.

At times like this

I think of places

Far far away

And dream I’m going someplace

Where seagulls wheel high in the sky

And waves break upon the shore

Sounding like thunder

Moonlight dances across water

God, how I wish I were there.

This is a city

Where hopes and dreams

Are driven, sometimes taken away

And the truth of it is

I’m looking for God in Toronto

I’m positive he lives here somewhere

‘Cause Jesus is driving a taxi

Mohammad delivers the papers

And Buddha, he runs the store.

As for me I’m a disciple

Straining for knowledge

And yearning for truth

My heart tells me

We all of us deserve better.

We’re going nowhere

Silently aging as the minutes creep by

And the more that I look

At the faces around me

The more that I wonder and hope.

Jesus, he’s hearing confessions

From some suit in the back of his cab

He hear about lovers and stock options and ozone

And maybe he thinks he’s half mad

From the work, the fear, and the boredom

He sees just to survive.

Are we any of us any different?

I wonder and onward I drive

In my heart there are trees rustling softly,

A whisper of green in the wind

But I live in a high rise jungle

With windows, dead eyes, they stare

There’s a backyard for me,

And maybe some grass

If we work just a little bit harder.

Buddha, he’s had his share

Of guns in his face and threats.

He’s thinking of leaving for somewhere

Maybe Vancouver or Victoria, B.C.

He knows he’s got relatives there

What’s more, he himself’s a Canadian

The son of a son of a railway man

His family helped build this land

So why does he run the store?

‘Cause there’s always a dollar

Between him and the answer

And his ideas he gives to his sons

Hoping that they, someday, someday

Will have the answer with knowledge

‘Cause they know just a little bit more.

Me, I’m a disciple

Watching, and hearing, and living

Did this traffic just move a wee bit?

Mohammad he’s tired, he has two degrees

But he’s not licensed to even the score

So he works and he studies and waits

And he waits just a little more.

There’s something we all have in common

As we sit here and yearn for the flow

At the end of these tail lights

At the end of the road

Is a place that we all call home

So we are all united in something

A something so simple we miss it

There’s a place at end of this long weary day

Where a heart waits

And a family who knows

That if we all join together

Whatever the time or the place

We’d all of us have treasure:

Love, at the end of an off ramp

If ever, if ever

We get there.

Ó 1/7/1992 Catherine M. Harris Davies