No one knows what to do
when there’s nothing to do
while chores grow moss,
with no way to know what to anticipate,
other than dust.

One isolated day became
a cellar’s best lost treasure-filled chest . . .

Baseball bats and unworn team hats
stuffed animal prizes from Adventureland
Alessandra’s rhyming alphabet book
Grandma’s china from who knows when

And oh . . . a collection of World Atlas’
connected map lines separated
only by page breaks

travel trails highlighted in yellow
then stopping,
like time grew tired of waiting.

And I stopped to think of the body
searching for hidden treasures of the brain
trying to dust off the past,
folds of days leaving creases.

And how long can the heart keep pumping?
And how long before electronic impulses
grow tired, fail to spark?

And how long before sunrise
fails to rise again
mindful of travels ahead?

ROBERT SAVINO, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015-2017 & Bards Laureate 2019-2021, is a native Long Island poet, Board Member at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize. Robert is the co-editor of a bilingual collection of Long Island Italian Americans Poets (No Distance Between Us). His books include fireballs of an illuminated scarecrow and Inside a Turtle Shell.