Ah, memories

My granddad used to sit out in the back in the evenings smoking a bowl of cherry tobacco and pondering. Many times I seized the opportunity to grab the bowl of food remains, tea and coffee grounds and head out to the worm bed. We would feed them to make sure we would have some bait for the next fishing adventure with in the wee hours. Charles Daly was a natural man, by that I mean sod of the earth. Arising from the Peat bogs of Ireland he learned the meaning of hard work. Growing up in homes of stone and sod and timber he sought adventure in distant lands. Traveling roads of cobble and mud to sailing across seas that set him adrift, he carried leprechauns. The wee folk that knew how to play and trick the big fools had played with him often as a lad. He brought them to America as they sailed within him upon a ship bound for adventure. It's no wonder after many years of struggle that he would settle here content in this garden surrounded by woodlands and marsh. Those leprechauns had seen him through some testing times of social conditions. They still would posses him as he twanged his Irish mouth harp and danced a jig at 93. They inspired his heartfelt poetry and allowed him to clown so that others may laugh. He fished and enjoyed time spent with on the lakes at dawn, with the mists and woodland beings. And at the end of the days work he liked nothing better than to draw on his pipe and return to the land of leprechauns that existed within. I was a lucky wee lad to hear such tales in his garden as his adventures in the old country surfaced decades later. And now as I walk my path still decades beyond I still sense him within sharing those tales, as I am now the playful adventurer.