The Man Who Didn't Remember

Deep within the withering mind of an old man lay a million stories.
They resemble a life etched into simpler times filled with scrabble boards,
church on sun-kissed mornings and teenage love affairs.     

He struggles with 'the best of him', 
because he lives the worst of him on the days he barely remembers his name -  
a treasure passed down through generations
and the only medal he still has the strength to bear.

Nothing else he possesses is worth the trifling garbage he now speaks
as he comes to grips that his daughter, who favors her mother,
is not his deceased wife and the home he lives in bears no resemblance to his own
but to the prison walls of his mind and the sealed gates of his eyes.

Yesterday, he learned a new name and it suddenly became his own.

It all made sense then, for a while, until tomorrow
when he'll learn another that sounds similar to the one he learned today,
but they will never be the same, that is, only to his ears.

Today he walked a path that seemed almost too familiar,
and he breathed the summer’s setting sun into the weakened compartments of his soul,

By now he recollects the memories lost somewhere at Anna's hill,
then some drowned sorrows emerge from Enoch’s pond
and nearby the old shack too.

Perhaps when he goes again in the 'morrow,
the fishing line would reappear, and his loving daughter reassures him of this
though it’s been gone for forty years.

Now back in bed, the tomb which holds a living artifact,
the aged man hums a lullaby which he says takes him a while back,
Then he shuts his eyes and multiplies stars against grains of sand, 

As he dreams of happier times now, and dreams of happier times then,
then dreams and dreams on top of  dreams
only to forget what he dreamt tomorrow.