THE NATIONALITY OF OLD MEN:

You´ll find them hovering in the strangest places,

Determination etched on their weathered old faces,

Within the noisy grey edges of construction sites,

With their clicking dentures & their old milky sights.

 

You´ll see them sitting hunched on old park benches,

Huddled in their woolen scarves & arthritic clenches,

Garbed in hats, caps & often, their mismatched socks,

Hanging around bus stations & fishermen´s damp docks.

 

Men who have loved women & shaken baby´s toy rattles,

Who have gone to wars & sport scars of old fought battles,

Men of the colonies, of toil & oft, of positions well placed,

Brave men who never shirked or ran, when with danger faced.

 

Those men, fathers of beautiful daughters & smart clever sons,

Speaking old lingos, at which the young now merely poke fun,

Digging their allotments & remembering times of “back when”,

Hail to that special breed, the nationality of all the grand old men.