The Dimming

When she says it again—I have nothing
left to live for—

my siblings and I look at her,
at our mother’s face, the dimming

room, and none of us offers
How about us?

Instead, one by one, we go to her,
and take our mother’s hand––which is soft,

arthritic, beautifully ringed, and clasped, gripping tightly.
And when she raises the child's hand she is holding

and presses it to her dry lips, each of us thinks something akin
to––

but also its reverse––
This is a terrible moment

and one I want to never end.

*

She is upset––no, not upset––
yes, she admits, upset––with them

for making themselves so at home
in her garden,

and yet (she reminds herself)
each morning she delights in seeing them,

these deer who seem to so inhabit the stillness,
and it, them,

while hers feels different,
an apartness.

Above her now, a soft plodding of footsteps.
If I am not careful, the animals will soon eat all

my white lilies.
And yet, when they freeze––

seem uncertain what to do––
where to go––

she’d like to approach them slowly then
and touch their velvet faces.

Fay Dillof is a poet and therapist living in Northern California. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, New England Review, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Spillway, New Ohio Review, Field, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Sewanee Writers' Conference and recently nominated by NER for a Pushcart. Fay has been awarded the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize and the Dogwood Literary Prize.