20. And now for something completely different ...

It's an old cliche...'Where does the time go?'
Yet so true.,.where has it all gone?
Still I think like the lithe, young woman I once was
Though my body is broken, and old-age is rearing its head.

Who is that stranger staring back at me
From the mirror held up for me in front of my face?
I don't know that twisted smile,
The grey hair where it was once red.

Once a young mum, now I'm a grandmother 
Without a grandfather by my side, I face the future alone.
Plans, ambitions thwarted -
Some days it's difficult to go on.

But I'm not really alone;
My babies now have babies of their own.
And like a tree, my family grows - with me, the matriarch,
Its trunk. My friends, as a pool, widening and deepening, 
With the falling rain.

So, my life is very different now 
And just surviving is toil enough ...'broken but unbowed'
Is how I am! Now I am learning a new furrow to plough.
Sometimes I can look around me, and sometimes even say 
Life is good! And THIS is where the time went!