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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: In and Out (04/30/09)

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• TITLE: Twelve Hours | Previous Challenge Entry
  By Beth Muehlhausen
  05/05/09
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Twelve Hours

The cuckoo bobs
His head and nods
Each time the clock strikes a new hour
Up in his tower

Can’t walk or talk
Between tick-tocks
But waits within so quietly
Not being free

In still of night
He’s perched for flight
Inside the clock he waits to shoot
Outside and toot

The doors fling wide
And from inside
He jumps on springs with a loud shout
And a new count

At one o’clock
He doesn’t gawk
But sings and backs into his house
Quick like a mouse

Waiting so still
With patience nil
He’s cramped and achy head to toe
Ready to crow

The clock strikes two
And the cuckoo
Deftly escapes for twice as long
With double song

Then swept inside
He must abide
And patiently keep calm and cool
As per the rule

When three shows up
That bird erupts
From his closed doors on loaded springs
Sing-sings-and-sings

Retreats once more
To face the door
As he sits crouched inside the clock
Like a stiff rock

At stroke of four
Bursts through the door
Cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo
Quadruple whew

Confined within
He tucks his chin
While hunched up close in the tight place
Devoid of space

But soon his song
Becomes quite long
As out he pops and calls five times
With cuckoo-chimes

Then zip and zap
The doors slap-snap
And leave him mute and hidden well
Inside his shell

Minutes creep on
Toward certain dawn
Till bobble-head announces six
And backward flicks

The minutes roar
Inside the door
Where clockworks tick and tick and tock
And tock and rock

The family wakes
To fresh hot cakes
While reveille the cuckoo bawls
With seven calls

He’d like to hop
On table top
And nibble breakfast with them too
But they’ve no clue

Then right at eight
They dissipate
And tho’ alone the cuckoo blasts
His eight calls fast

The spring zooms back
With him on track
To wait an hour till the next chime
Which comes at nine

Time doesn’t quit
So with quick wit
Our bird jumps out for nine cuckoos
And sings the blues

He seldom rests
Without a nest
Inside the clock where he might sleep
While minutes creep

With ready eye
He heaves a sigh
And shouts ten blasts of raucous noise
Like boisterous boys

Once more inside
He tends to hide
So well no one thinks he’s alive
Waiting to jive

Eleven calls
Take lots of breath
He belts them out with bug-eyed zeal
The cuckoo’s peal

Time to retreat
Before the feat
That takes his breath twice every day
Singing away

At noon the door
Opens once more
For twelve long calls he thrusts his neck
A pecking wreck

Silence and shouts
And ins and outs
Define the life of cuckoo-ville
Where he counts still

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