Mourning an Hour of Lost Morning

I am totally out of sorts this morning.

Which means, of course, I am totally in sync with everyone else.

Is daylight saving time really necessary?

Do hundreds of millions of hours of sleep really need to be sacrificed each spring so a handful of farmers in the Midwest can plow later?

I mean, don’t they have high beams out there?

Sorry if all this sounds a little grumpy. It’s just that I tend to take my sleep very seriously.

You want to challenge my right to free speech, I’m concerned.

You want to extend daylight saving time two hours, and I’m buying camouflage pants and looking for a militia group.

Anyhow, in honor of sleep, and in mourning over the hour that was just so cruelly snatched from us, the following tribute is offered:

Drowsy and dreamy,

Nestled and snug,

Safe from the wide-awake world,

I come.

In praise of sleep,

In celebration of shut-eye,

In homage to the god of nod,

I come.

Only to find:

Insufficiency,

Inadequacy,

Failure.

And so . . .

With borrowed words,

With stolen thoughts,

With fractured phrases,

I write of:

The patriot:

Give me 10 more minutes or give me death.

The humorist:

Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.

The insomniac:

There is no bad sleep, only bad sleepers.

The cynic:

Early to rise and early to bed, makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

The philosopher:

The darkest hour is just before dawn.

The motivator:

If at first you don’t sleep, try, try again.

The Welshman:

Do not go gentle into the dawn’s light, rage, rage against the dying of the night.

The wit:

The amount of sleep required by the average person is just five more minutes.

The poet:

Sleep comes in on little cat feet.

The city:

That never sleeps.

The veterinarian:

Let sleeping dogs lie.

The don:

Sleep with the fishes.

The bard:

To sleep perchance to dream . . .

So, to the moral:

Spring not forward,

Save to hit the snooze button,

Save to pull the shades,

Because:

Sleep not want not,

Because,

Sleep conquers all,

Because,

Sleep is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

* Shea is a columnist at the Hartford Courant. To reach him write to Jim Shea, Hartford Courant, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115.