Thrift Store Blues

Thrift Store Blues    
      
The background music is the eighties      
But her mind swims further upstream      
While her fingers sort used clothes      
Which she cannot afford      
Her manager notes she seems self-absorbed      
With her mind not on her work      
But this thrift store holds the key      
To her preoccupation      
For one person’s trash is another’s treasure      
And that futon gives her dreams      
Of a firm mattress for her aching back      
The stereo with a five-disc changer      
Would play her disco boogie      
Without ads to interrupt      
Yet the overalls she just hung up      
Would take her to an America of cornfields      
Where her great grandma      
Worked alongside the men      
And people grew their own food      
With grocery stores the last resort      
But her dreams lay fallow for another season