Owen: after the stroke

Your memory was a reel of film
spliced by age
in places.
Your gait was timid as a pup's, but still
you wouldn't trip. And they wouldn't let you,
buying steel handrails and bathtub chairs, renting
the hospital bed,
which is all you need now. And still,
they guide you along through your stories-
names and places, names of places
naming the place you'll keep indefinitely warm
over and over again, each day for you
until sundown
because your memory is a collage
of Polaroid pictures- peculiar,
fading back, one by one
to dark and empty
squares.