Apologia Pro Vetus Hominibus Poem by Francie Lynch

Call us perverted,
But read on first,
Then, by the end,
After our verse,
Call us your worst:
Dirty old men, gutter snipes,
Lecherous gawkers,
Cause we gaze in wonder and awe
At girls from eighteen to ninety-five.
Don't step back and feign aghast,
Whisper covert tsks, and gasp,
What? Oh such dirty old men!
But we are most the same.

We don't oogle or use a scope
Waiting behind a bush at night,
Til the lights go on
Through windows known to be undrawn.

We don't visit public pools
With goggles and a snorkel,
That's just sick, that's not us,
Our admiration's not so twisted,
We grew up to respect the sisters.

We wonder at the parade of beauty,
So pleasing to our eyes,
They dress to allure
Younger looks,
They swagger, tilt and sashay past
With legs as long as trees,
No VPL to interrupt
The curvature of our minds,
The girth of Mother Earth.
Compare it to one window-shopping,
Admiring wares and worth;
But please, read every line I wrote
Before labeling us, Pervert.

If we were eighteen years again,
We're lads out plowing fields,
Sowing wild grains,
Reaping refrains of 'They're boys just being boys.'

We had our ancient pleasures,
Still comparable to now,
But the lushness of the ripened fruit
Is hanging on the bough,
For younger hands, not ours.

The columned temples of runway models
With flying buttress thighs,
And the bull-frong fronts and volleyball stunts
Have us pleased, but we don't pry.

(We're not a pussy grabbing lot,
That's not how we usually talk,
In fact I haven't shared these thoughts,
I'm reluctant to do so now) .

You know you can't blame us
For what a blind man sees;
The cleavage, high-slits and commando style,
The augmentations meant to beguile
Has caught us in crossfire.

The soft unbleached skin,
The bosom and the neck,
The falling, twirling tresses,
Grace the backs of backless dresses.
Wear grotesques to dissuade us,
To disapprove our ageless looks.

Our eyes don't linger on the bust,
We don't display old men's lust,
In fact we're rather obsequious,
To the point where we're air,
You'd not notice that we're there.
But we are, and we look;
And I remember what it took
To be young and on the hunt
For the Yeti, Loch Ness, alien sort.

Don't tell your friends we're perverted,
Scurrilous id-focused men;
We're neither. We're average fellows
Watching from the stands.

Yes, our daughters are older than
The babes seen on the screens,
But that has naught to do with us,
We still think like eighteen.

We watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore,
Drink tepid tea with toast and jam
To the credits of The Golden Girls;
But when the grandkids come to visit,
We take them for ice-cream,
Or if we take the poodle to walk,
They pool like thirsty fleas.
It isn't my intent to bait, but I have eyes to see,
Those girls older than eighteen,
Many like to please with teasing,
With eyes that grip, hair that flips,
Hands so soft,
I'm at a loss-
What's a man to do-
From forty years to ninety-two?

Well, this farmer's aged, my harvest's in,
The grain that bowed the straw
Has now been threshed and milled to flour,
For the bread to rise again.