As I left the banquet hall tonight and turned the corner, I realized that my flashlight was completely unnecessary.

The trees abruptly parted over the road, branches forming a delicate black tracery of fringe, each leaf and twig picked out in lace tatted from gleaming silver and framing moon of fat benevolence. The icy light poured down over me and washed the road in cashmere-soft charcoal. The crisp pine darkness was completely silent. Not a breath of breeze profaned the reverence; I was dazzled by a masterpiece worked only in black and white. I just stopped for a moment, trying to burn the beauty into my mind - to capture something no camera or painting could replicate. But of course such wonders are by their nature fleeting.

It's startling to go that short distance it takes for the artificial things we use to tame the night to fall away. When the buzz of sodium arc streetlights, the glare of neon and traffic signals, and the familiar rush of cars fade away, it's just you and the dark. Sometimes frightening - but tonight pure magic. I could readily picture fairies dancing madly in rings of abandon, deceptive maidens waiting to pull the hapless to their death in pools of cold black water, or a unicorn stepping into a quiet glade.

I reflected ironically that there was at least one fairy in the woods tonight, and got into the car with a smile playing on my face, and they lyrics of a song in the back of my mind:

The streets of town
were paved with stars
it was such a magic affair

That when we kissed
and said goodnight
A nightingale sang in Barkley Square...

A trifle tame for the silver-lit woods, but pretty.