Waiting for the night to take its long effect
on the avenues’ calm and winding wondrous walks;
a boy of just sixteen slips outside and stalks
the roads where lamplight leaves the moonlight wrecked
in catastrophic streaks, shimmering through hedges.
He moves about the rich areas of the village
like a conscript to an age, his hands primed to pillage
even the plant-pots that hang from window ledges.

But he is not a thief, and in the riverside homes
he sees nothing which he would inflict upon himself;
the lanky yachts where weeds in the water combs
his thoughts to the voices and the majestic sounds
that money makes: he looks, this is not wealth;
it’s a frantic godliness, exchanged for pounds.


(The Broads: miles of man-made rivers and lakes in East Anglia, the edges of which are inhabited by swans, bitterns and the super-duper rich.)

Stug Jordan

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/broads-boy-poem/