Love in Nature

Two of something. That is the only rule here — two cardinals on one branch, two frogs under one leaf, two koi turning in the same water, two butterflies on the same stem of clover.

It started with one bird. Cardinals don't migrate. When the cold comes and everything else flies south, they stay — the same two, on the same few acres, all winter, and they don't fade to grey either. Watch a window long enough in January and they are the only color left in the yard.

That felt like the truer picture of love: not the grand gesture, but the staying. So we kept drawing it, in whatever creature it turned up in — a heart made of roses, a leaf held up against the rain, a pair tucked so close the branch seems to be holding them in. Hang one where the morning sun lands, and the light will do the rest.