Camera

I rode my bike to town today

Wobbling down the path

I knew the kids would see me

I love it when they laugh

And I wish I were a camera

And I could slice time like a knife

Seeing stories in the faces

And crystallizing life

Wish I were a camera

I wish it all the time

It gives my eyes a reason

It gives my life a rhyme

I'd be a lens that could see souls

A shutter that never shuts

I'd have film that lasts forever

And I would live in huts

In the jungles of South America

Like my father before the war

I'd find out where we came from

And what this life is for

And I wish I were a camera

I wish it all the time

It gives my eyes a reason

It gives my life a rhyme

And I wish I were a camera

I wish it all the time

It gives my eyes a reason

It gives my life a rhyme

I would climb right off this planet

On the clearest night of all

And photograph the future

When it finally comes to call

I would save up all these images

These instants in a box

And when I am old and lonely

They could cover up the clocks

And I wish I were a camera

I wish it all the time

It gives my eyes a reason

It gives my life a rhyme

I wish that I could shoot at night

And leave without a trace

And catch my lover's sleeping smile

By the starlight on her face

But I think mostly that l'd see children

'Cause they haven't learned to hide

And they watch me on my bicycle

And laugh with me as I ride