The Decamile of Life

### See more of my poetry on my Titbits page ###

Celebrating the Life of Tony Greenfield

From Chapeltown to Broomcroft
Is a mere ten miles:
A decamile, mas o menos.
That’s not a long way,
But it took me almost eighty-eight years.

I taught you all to estimate,
And to understand the errors.
Fifty-two thousand and eight hundred feet
Sounds like a very long way,
But it took me over thirty-two thousand days.

That’s less than twenty inches a day!
But consider this:
I went via Bedford and Brocksford,
Healey and Hillsborough,
Grenoside and Millbush,
Lyme Regis, Lake District, Peak District.

I went to Barcelona, Budapest,
Linz, Oslo, Rimini,
Dortmund and Gothenberg,
Copenhagen, Helsinki,
Katmandu, Quito and Marrakesh.

Skiiing in the Alps . . . AND on the River Tay.
Around the world, along my way.
Fiji, Bangkok and Chang Mai.
Nelson, New Zealand
To see my brother. I’d have liked to stay.

Sydney and San Francisco,
The Amazon rain forest,
Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru,
Rio Napo and the Andes,
Islas Galápagos too.

I’ve dined in Turin and Cagliari,
And Venice and in Rome,
In Ljubljana and in London,
Paris, Wroclaw and Stockholm,
In Tel Aviv and Vienna.

And I’ll tell you this.
Everywhere I dined,
All over the world,
I’d spill gravy down my pink tie,
And I’d ALWAYS check my flies.
. . . THAT’S a lie!

So my life was just a decamile,
A very remarkable decamile,
Thirty-two thousand days.
Every inch and every minute,
For all of us, here today,
Has been full of laughs and smiles.

Have fun!