This morning, dew-dipped feathers told a story older than grief. A cardinal neighbor who brightened my studio garden, a living work of art, had become sustenance—scattered crimson testament to a hawk’s hunger. I imagine four small lives depended on that transformation.
We call it loss, but energy never disappears. It shifts, transfers, animates new flight. The cardinal’s vibrant existence continues in powerful wings cutting through sky, in fledglings learning to hunt, and in the garden’s soil receiving what remains.
What seems like an ending is really regeneration, a beginning—life pouring itself into new vessels, forever becoming. The same brilliance that caught sunlight on red feathers now fuels another family’s survival. Nothing beautiful is ever truly gone.
