Blinded by paradise,
All I see is beauty and hope.
The woman at the shit store
Complains that no one will work for her.
It’s a problem all over Florida, she says,
People living off unemployment,
But she could never sit still that long,
She’d go crazy, she says.
I think of her, working in her shop
One of a dozen up and down the strip
Of 1950s architecture and rotting seaside motels,
Putt-putt and Subway and the place that will take you,
For $65 a head,
Out onto an ocean that appears to be free.
She works and worries and somehow survived the pandemic,
Maybe with stimulus money? Who knows,
But here she is,
A survivor like all the others,
And therefore,
A winner.