In Waiting

When, years ago she first
entered our home to take up
residence as an honoured guest,
the creation of sensitive, gifted
hands and an empathetic artist's
vision of grace in old age
competing with nature's
sublime design, we thought
of her as emblematic of her kind,
a journey we had yet to take,
still in the distant future,
viewing her presence as a gift
to ourselves, symbolic of an
inevitable, mystic force of nature
to which all living things succumb,
taking pleasure in the serenity
of her complacent smile
as though at rest with the
certain knowledge of life
breeding life as the original
returns to dust. Now, as the days
since then have evolved into 
years, I behold my visage
mirroring her own and wonder
that I have come to resemble her,
or is it that she always was a
reflection of me, in waiting...?