Poem: Night Owl

To those who say (with an air of gentle admonition)
“You are a night owl”
I say to them
“You are a liar”

Are they insinuating
Through hackneyed phrase and well-worn cliché
That there are day owls?
Some normal breed of photo-avian
Who keep regular birdly hours
In a timely, bespectacled manner?

Furthermore, (I cry indignantly)
What do night owls know?
Of Monday mornings in grim dawn light
Of pain and tightness behind the splitting eyes
Of the steady, insistent hooting of my alarm clock
Just moments before I tear it from the wall?

No, night owls know nothing of these things.
So, I am no night owl
But rather a day owl (if they exist)
Who keeps very irregular hours


Copyright 2006, Elijah Hubbard