When I grow up…

My first attempt at spoken word, inspired by an older entry.

When I grow up, I want to pick berries
Where the food that I need every day is outside
Just a stroll through the woods every morning and evening
To fill up my belly with what I can find

I won’t need to go to the grocery store
Where everything comes so neat in a can
Canned tomatoes and peaches and cherries and salmon
And little white cheeses in red waxy cases

Instead I’ll just climb up a tree
Grab an apple or two
Maybe find some sweet honey
Or else dig around in the dirt
Tasty shrooms all around
And maybe some truffles
Or the fish in the lake
Or the deer in the woods
Or the squirrel in the tree
Cause some people like squirrel!

But they won’t let me, they tell me I can’t
Have to get me a job, have to get me a car
There’s no place left in the world I can go
To live out my dream of living the hunt

When you go to the city
It doesn’t look pretty
For miles and miles there’s people you see
And it’s not that I don’t like to see all the people
But I’ve seen the real jungle
It’s got no concrete

I’ve been to the plains of the great Seringetti
So close to the place that our species began
Not just people around them, but all sorts of creatures
A modern-day density could not be found
No grocery stores
No streets full of people
Just a tribe
And a hunt
And a wide open land

When I grow up, I want to pick berries
And hunt for my food like my ancestors did
I can’t help but think that the city is lonely
And life is too short to surrender and fade