Fr La’s weekly ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path at Lough Derg. This week’s reflection is ‘Looking for Life’.

Out there today I was looking for life.

In this shamrock season I knew there’d be none of it

along this stretch of path through the pines.

But the three-leafed sorrel was springing up green,

its freshness promising something of spring.

Then at last I saw what I had hoped for:

a cluster of spawn in the steam by the wayside. 

It was not very pretty, not pretty at all –

not the transparent jelly from the ponds of my chlidhood

that we carried home or to school in a jam-jar

to watch as the weeks turned full stops into commas

and the commas came alive as wriggling tadpoles.

I found what I hoped for, though not as expected:

dark murky frogspawn in a brown mountain stream.

Life does not always have to be pretty.

Fr La Flynn, Prior

22 March 2021