WHERE IS EVERYONE HEADED

Where is everyone headed?

The cock has not yet crowed

Chicken eavesdropping from the hens pinion

To hear the early morning cockerel’s calling

Three AM my clock has just said her opinion

And the road is already busy

With people walking, running, coming, going

But the sky is yet to get busy.

Where is everyone headed?

The slap-slap of hurrying pairs of slippers;

The pee-pee-pee of okada hustlers;

And the deafening sound of cars complaining,

Yet the crickets to the sun a sung sing

A lovely lullaby for the sleeping king

Against the cacophony of molue buses calling

But the sky is still blind folded

Where is everyone headed?

Uzo! Uzo! The truck pusher has shouted,

Pushing through some scurrying bodies;

Weary bodies denied of sweet night dreams;

Sleepy eye piercing through darksome days;

Running feet for no defined extremes;

Tired hands slicing the air like sword’

But the sky is yet to say a word

Where is everyone headed?

Even when the sun comes awake

With her beaming eyes of fire lake

Through the window holes he headed

But legs have kept moving here and there

Chasing after elusive thin air sway

Till they die and rot away

Yet the sky will still be there

Where is everyone headed?

With a wink of the suns eyes sockets

The street has gone deserted

Not even the cry of dying cars is heard,

Nor the road side peddler’s noisy call;

Not even the quack-quack of the duck is heard,

Nor the sing sung of the sung birds all;

But only a distant shrill of the crickets

And the croaking laughter of the father toad

That derisively mocks the follies of men’s hold

Struggling till the sun begins to wake again

And man begins to scurry again

Same cycle everyday he dies again

And what has man got to gain?