What Yesterday May Bring

Nigeria: Another sunset or a new sunrise? 

Like when the question

Is written on the screen

But the answer is locked

Up in the ill wind

Like when you is witness

To some final burial rites

But as yet the crucial element

Has, by no means, arrived.

We beckon to the last straw

That will serve as trigger

To the imminent implosion

Yet we're in this together

Though maybe, not forever

So we need to show

A measure of mature

In the way we go

At tearing up our structure.

We are perched at a precarious angle

Fighting gravity as we dangle

Hanging to a history of conflict-spangled

Unity that's got us trapped in a tangle.

The bombs we detonated,

To guns we reiterated,

The slash of the machete,

Innards strewn like spaghetti,

Are pointers of the national eclipse

Playing like trailers for horror flicks.

How long? Not long

Before we climb the hill

To walk through the valley of

The substance of diversity.

We must break out of our shells

Step up from these ethnic cells,

Knot a cord on a 3-fold string

To stoke what yesterday may bring.

In this place where we stand,

Each one of us holds in their hand

A kindling spark.

If we all torch this fragile Union

Will it forge an eternal communion?

We must answer for the next generation.

Akpan