Would you believe that dumb alarm,
It failed to work again.
Sam would be late another time,
Just like he’d usually been.

He’d bought it from a peddler,
It had no guarantee.
It would have cost too much
Had the peddler made it free!

The peddler said that this alarm
Was sure to be a winner.
If it didn’t work tomorrow,
He’d have the thing for dinner.

Sam stayed up way too late,
Around the court yard fire.
When there’s so much excitement,
One seldom seems to tire.

The man had answered far too quickly
And you could see his fear.
When Sam had said, “I saw you
Cut off that fellow’s ear.”

“It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there”,
But Sam could tell he lied.
The angry curses, hard to fake,
No matter how he tried.

Sam had a hard time leaving;
The courtyard fire was warm.
He didn’t know how he’d wake up
With his no good alarm.

Sam didn’t hear the stupid rooster,
But one thing that we know,
Down in the courtyard by the fire,
A man named Peter heard him crow.

You won’t appreciate a rooster for an alarm clock unless you’ve lived in the country. There are advantages and disadvantages: they work during power failures and you don’t have to remember to set them, but they know nothing about daylight saving time and they can’t be un-set for weekends and holidays. You also have to worry about night predators, such as the fox, coon or owl, turning your alarm off prematurely. I thought it would be interesting to make up a story about one of the possible courtyard bystanders on the night Peter denied knowing Jesus, not from any perspective of how it might have changed his life from his close encounter with Jesus and Peter, but that life goes on, even with the unbeliever.

Matthew 26:34