365 Uses For a Diary

Every day is a page to write a new story But isn't this life's diary? Leather aroma Tightly bound tome Mint and crisp at birth Becoming well thumbed and worn Finally we reach the last page As we reach our last breath To be filed away in the Great Library Shelved with all the others Do we meekly record our lives? The next page like the last? Are the paragraphs important? The sentences? The phrases? The words? The letters? The droplets of drying ink? Maybe it's the paper? Most days are plain writing paper Some are parchment Some are toilet tissue Bit of cardboard here and there Or is it what we do with it? Tear out a day Let's start with a paper airplane That was fun Tear out a few weeks? Shred and mix water? Papier maché? Make some great volcanoes! Tear out a season? Spring, summer, autumn, winter Doesn't matter Bit of origami? Sandpaper swans? Foolscap frogs? Papyrus posies? Or tear out a lifetime One day at a time Score and fold and stick and cut Small pieces join together Slowly takes shape Patience Build a model Build a sculpture Build a masterpiece Save the last page for the epitaph At the end the Great Librarian Takes this finished life Glasses perch precariously on the point of her nose Tightly bunned hair now slightly askew She shakes her head and tuts "Not another one!" "We don't have the space!" "I'll just have to squeeze this between Mozart and Einstein" (Entry for the "quote response" contest - re-entered for the "Premiere I - OpenPoetry Contest")