As though a plate

As though a plate, spread over with designs of scenes and fruit, gold-rimmed, blue-tendrilled, rayed with colored patterns, bound with ordered vines, slipped from the grasp and smashed -- the pieces sprayed across the tile floor; as though we stood and looked at fragments, felt dismayed with loss, felt shrunken, wilted, wondered what we could do now; as though the shards of scattered dross began to move from under cabinets, chairs, to gather up again and click in place, each piece now fusing in slow self-repairs, stem feeding flower, restoring all its grace, the pattern new, not chipped, crack-blurred -- astonishing: that's how it occurred.