THEY LEARNED TO move like that in the kitchen when they were three and four and five, and if it weren’t for the accordion and the one song they all knew and the uncle who was still in form back then, they never could have started with their feet and knees going like that like hammers, the notes slow at first but then it was picked up and without a break they stepped and danced until their eyes jigged and rattled in their own heads and they fell to the floor, they laughed, they reeled themselves out, the group was delirious, the arborite jumped, the pepper fell, the cocoa steamed, the door closed and then it was they stopped to breathe the same black wind out of the northeast, the white on white on black on black, the night waves on the Reach under the shadows of the biggest of the islands, the black sound the ocean made, the black shadow that moved on rocks, the black dog that came out of nowhere, the stars they knew so very few, the sound the grass made, the latch that froze or slipped or cried, the wood that cracked, the gate that swayed, the gravel scuffed, the rock they learned to pivot on before they learned to dance.