Chasing The Sunset

In the Serengeti Plain, just before the finger of the sun reaches out and breaks up the first dewdrops on the Whistling Thorn Acacia, the gazelle stirs awake: Instantaneously and completely.

She salutes the cloudless sky with a sigh and thinks,

“I must outrun the fastest lion, otherwise, I shall not live to see the sunset!”

The day has begun as the gazelle stretches its forelegs and breaks into a trot.

At the other side of Massailand, the lion has a lazy awakening. He stretches on hind legs and swats at a fly in the air, and congratulates himself on his first kill even as he thinks,

“I must chase and catch the slowest gazelle, otherwise, I shall not live to roar at the sunset!”

A New Clear Yawn at Dawn separates the night from the day as the first clap of thunder rises from the lion’s hinder parts.

So, whether you are a gazelle or a lion, when the sun rises at the Serengeti Plain, you should start running …

For one only will catch this day’s sunset.

Ik Ngene writes from Atlanta.

Footnote: The Gazelle represents the Nigerian Youth