Kudzu Covenant

[Verse 1]
This new wisteria chokes the porch screen frame
Where a different ghost used to rock.
I planted it myself the August that it rained
Just to hide the water-stain on the block.

[Chorus] (Male Vocalist)
But does the soil forget the seed it held?
You pull the stalk, but does the ground rebel?

[Verse 2]
The Gullah basket's tight, a different weave I use,
Scrape of sweetgrass on my thumb is all I feel.
Mama used to say, "Some roots, child, were born to lose."
And I tell myself that covenant was real.

[Chorus] (Male Vocalist)
But does the soil forget the seed it held?
You pull the stalk, but does the ground rebel?

[Bridge] (Female Vocalist)
Six years of silence is its own long row to hoe,
A heavy quiet, bitter on the tongue.
And these uncuttable runners, everywhere I go,
Trace a phantom limb back where we were young.

[Outro] (Overlapping)
(Female vocalist hums a broken fragment of a Bach melody)
(Male vocalist, whispered fade)
Does the soil forget...