Keeping busy

He bit the Apple
Of knowing good and evil
And the to-do list

The Man and the Squirrel

The squirrel chortled at the man,
Gnawing on a green orb from his apple tree
Like a fast-forward of the disease.
.
Amusement and irritation had lit his eyes
 while a planned brewed behind them.
There was no distance to speak of
Between the man's mind and his hands
  when he worked his fixes.

And so, caged and angry, the squirrel's claws gripped makeshift wiring
As the car wound down the country road miles from the apple tree,
It's tail twittering nervously, marked by a spray of red paint,
While the man chortled now.

In the hospital bed, Day after day, in a sustained effort,
The man's chest heaved and drew in all the life he could,
Each passing moment.

In the quieted garage lay lonely his long bench of tools;
His myriad companions and colleagues,
But his first tools were buried with him.

For even with the oxygen mask strapped to his face
And the skin on his legs gripping the bones,
Even then, stretched among the pillows and white sheets,
Moving little beyond the great rhythm of his chest
His hands!, his hands gripped true and strong the hands of his loved ones,
Making with them a bond beyond his blood and life.

When the squirrel had come back those miles that week,
Fluttering its red tail like the dare of a matador
On its way along the fence to the apple tree,
The man watched him gnaw a new apple
And he must have paused to wonder
What life had in store for him.

A bald question

If as Christ says,
God has numbered all the hairs on my head
What does that say about how many days
I have left
And how high He counts?