COVID-19: Arts and Poems
Kintsugi
Many of us are
living lives in lockdown
feeling broken.
Cracked open.
Wounds ripped
where once,
loving kisses and hugs
lightly danced.
The Japanese mend
their most precious
cracked vases
whilst not trying to hide
the fissures.
They suture instead
those hideous breaks
with gold in the glue.
To extract loveliness
from life's vicissitudes.
To celebrate evidence
of damages done,
and the great courage needed
to re-form a sound bond,
delicately causing no further harm.
Thence new beauty emerges.
Renewal reveres
wounds and strength
coalesced for survival:
a golden repair.
May we take pride
That we too don't hide
the damage
but finesse gold repairs to
the cracks in our hearts.
The pain from those scars,
doctored, adds
to our worth.
Thence new beauty emerges.
Our golden repairs.
Margot Fairclough
One midsummer
The air outdoors
lies hot and still.
Hard to heave into lungs.
Blanketing.
Suffocating.
A tiny insight
to the patient Covid suffering.
Released from lockdown
I pace the beach boulevard.
It's been weeks since last I saw it.
Tall poppies are burgeoning.
Clear, oxygenated scarlet,
pools of petals beneath.
The poppies: remembrance to
the fallen.
Do they flower now for Covid,
falling far, far too soon?
They reach for the skies
beside other, intense
bugleweed spires.
Contrasts, pulsing with passion,
flooded
with the blossoming tears
of the heartbroken left to grieve.
Bees contentedly, buzzily,
brush their legs
against all the petals,
drawing forth succour and
nectar,
whilst they hum.
Joining the separated.
Feeding new growth.
It feels right
to take comfort in this
stunningly beautiful
symbolism,
emerging from
the arid soil and
the airless air
of a Covid midsummer.
Margot Fairclough
Midsummer poppies
Japanese Kintsugi