Dancing Church

One evening, I heard the owls calling in the wood and saw the moon on her lonely path, rising carefully over the West Dean church. The rays of the moon lengthened, became liquid: they shimmered and wove the light, creating movement of the very stones. The streaming light softened and enlivened the iron gate, the stones, even  the archways leading to the interior of the silent building. The structure seemed to melt a little. As I watched, it began to move in a slow, stately minuet.

All that night, and for many night after, the owls called until morning when songbirds took up their own sprightly chorus, but it was only once that I saw the church in its mysterious dance, brought to life by a tide of moonbeams, under a satin sky.