Have you heard
Of Kintsugi?

The Japanese art
Putting together
The broken pieces
Of pottery
With gold

A bowl
Not broken, renewed
With scars of golden thread,
Now more beautiful
Stronger
More precious than what was before

Because it tells of life
Of past experiences
Of resilience
All that it was
Yet more than it was

It seems to me
That we are like that bowl
Broken
By fire and flood and now
A cruel virus
Keeping us from one another

But we found the gold, before
As we looked after one another
We all saw the beauty
The golden threads pulling us together
Covering scars of pain with something wonderful
Our sense of humanity and community.

When this is over
I hope we will see
Kintsugi in us all
Each of us
And all of us
Renewed,
Beautiful
With our lives more precious than before.