Lion was the King of all the animals
From his golden mane and his amber eyes
To his shining pelt and his velvet paws
He was the most beautiful, the most magnificent
The most dazzling creature you could ever imagine
Everywhere that lion roamed
Every living thing fell in love with him
The zebra, the monkey, the giraffe,
Even the trees and the grasses beneath Lion’s feet
Whispered as he walked by
“Oh Lion, I love you, How I love you!”
But Lion heard nothing
In fact he had never heard anything
In his whole life
Apart from the sound of his own voice
Lion lived alone in the rocky peaks
Of the highest mountain of his Kingdom
And from there he liked to survey his territory
From one end to the other
One day, as Lion was looking down from his mountain
He said to himself,
“I know every inch and every nook of my Kingdom
I have roamed this land a thousand times
There is nothing new here for me to discover,
Nothing to whet my appetite for adventure.
“I wish to take a journey beyond my land
To discover what lies in the far reaches of the world
And I will journey on and on to the ends of the earth
To the place where I can go no further!”
So Lion descended from his mountain, crossed his Kingdom
And leaving behind everything that he knew
He began to walk on and on and on and on
Through verdant jungles of emerald trees and chattering birds
Through mighty mountains of snowy peaks and circling eagles
Through endless desert of burning sun and swirling sands
And everywhere that Lion went
Every living thing fell in love with him
The emerald trees, the chattering birds, the snowy peaks, the circling eagles
Whispered as he walked by
“Oh Lion, I love you, How I love you!”
But Lion heard nothing
Only the sound of his own voice
Beating over and over like a drum
“On and on and on I must go till the ends of the earth
To the place where I can go no further!”
Until one day Lion came to a desert Of burning sun and swirling sands That blew into shifting sand dunes Each dune higher than the next And as Lion climbed dune after dune The burning sun beat down upon his brow He began to sweat And the more he sweated The more salt water poured into his eyes Until he could barely see ahead of him And as he kept on climbing He thought he saw through his stinging eyes The strangest thing in the distance Something huge shimmering Dancing on the surface of the sand But he could not be quite sure what it was So on he went all day, climbing dune after dune And that strange shimmering thing got closer and closer But still he could not make out what it was Until he climbed to the top of one dune higher than all the rest A cool breeze swept across his face The sweat cleared from his brow and his eyes And he saw clearly at last A great expanse of water That stretched from one end of the horizon to the other That danced and glimmered with a thousand tones Of blue and green and all the colours in between That sent rolling waves as tall as Lion himself Crashing towards the shore Where they broke into a thousand drops of foamy spray It was the Sea Lion stopped for a moment and stared at this spectacle And he said to himself his body swelling with pride “Finally! I have reached the end of the earth! This is the place where I can go no further!”
But in that that very same moment he felt A cold churning in the depths of his belly And a trembling in his legs For never had he seen anything so vast, So mysterious, so unfamiliar
The moment the Sea saw Lion She fell in love with him “Oh Lion, I love you, how I love you,” she whispered
But Lion heard nothing....
How will the Sea make Lion listen to her?
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Artist Credits:
Cathy McClelland
Mugwort Designs
