Moonlight Dance

The moon continues to paint patterns through the woods and into the clearing; the dark shadow of the house is sharp and distinct against the silvered white of the moonlit snow.

The familiar pines and hemlocks take on a strange enchantment as they partner with their shadows in a moonlit dance choreographed by the late evening breeze.

Standing on the ground in the clearing I am surrounded by the dancing partners. Stars seem to rest in the upper branches in the way that jewels rest on the head and shoulders of dancing matrons.

Climbing upstairs to watch from the skylight,
stars take their places back in the canopy of the heavens seeming like windows from which unseen spectators watch the ball.

Stars
How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.
---Robert Frost