Coupling resides in the graceful arc of longing and desire, in the gesture of both gratitude and embrace. Coupling is holding something infinitely precious in your hands, like the body of an infant you are rocking to sleep, or the head of a loved one you are about to kiss, or two leaves locked in an embrace on the snow, the leaves and the snow equally illuminated by the brilliant caress of the winter sunlight. To couple is to cup water in your hands and raise it to your thirsty lips to drink, to cradle a small mound of snow in the palm of two bronze leaves, themselves cupped by the snow on which they are nestled. Coupling is the fierce strength and tenderness of heavy dark bronze leaves and the delicate pointed tips of the leaves, caught in that moment of harmonious balance between masculine and feminine. Coupling is raising your hands to the sky in a gesture of gratitude, in an offering of love to the beloved. To couple is to make love with all there is in the world so that nothing is ever left out: two colors joining to make heat in a painting, two thoughts joining to birth a new thought, a snake coiling up the trunk of a tree to whisper a temptation in a woman’s ear, a father twirling his son high in the air to the sound of delighted screeches. Coupling is making love indiscriminately: the way the leaves make love with each other and at the same time with the snow and the light and the shadows and the wind: lovers all. The leaves remind us that we have always been joined together in an embrace of thanksgiving, but that we had fallen asleep for a moment and forgotten. The leaves remind us that, properly perceived, we are always coupling.
