Broad Street Poem by Frank Avon

Let's assume
they were ordinary folk,
a hosier and his wife,
their shop on the ground floor,
its looms and till,
living quarters upstairs,
sleeping rooms near the top,
dissenters among Georgians,
maybe Moravians,
maybe Muggleonians,
voting for Charles James Fox,
the older brother
in the image of his father,
penny-wise, unpretending,
a younger brother derelict
(favored by his folks) ,
recklessly off to war,
a sister matronly,
and he among them
a dreamer of dreams
- he saw his God -
threatened for his visions,
too sensitive to be subjected
to the schoolmaster's rod,
largely self-taught,
perhaps with chapbooks,
cheap books with awkward woodcuts
of 'forests dark and drear, '
crippled beggars and wayfarers,
deathbed scenes,
twisted city streets,
but also Horace and Aesop,
Joseph and his brothers:
'Born like a Garden
ready planted and sown.'