Threshold Dust

[Verse 1]
The bag of Sea-Hume from the nursery split open on the floorboard,
just past ten on a Tuesday night, a mess I can't afford
to ignore. Left a black silt signature, smelled like low tide and might,
a gritty map of the marshlands underneath the kitchen light.
Grabbed the broom from the closet, bristles worn down to the nub,
thinking 'bout the lab, the petri dish, the microscopic scrub
of logic off of everything. But my hand just stopped in place,
saw my Great-Auntie Clara's warning written on my own damn face.

[Chorus]
Auntie Clara told me, "Don't you sweep at night, girl."
"Sweep your kinfolk out the door, sweep 'em to the spirit world."
Auntie Clara told me, "Don't you sweep at night, see?"
"That pluff mud on your boots holds all your family."

[Verse 2]
I map out xylem, phloem, chart the life in every cell,
I can tell you why a fern frond dies and send its spores to hell
and back. I got a degree that says I only deal in facts,
in things the eye can verify, in clean and sterile acts.
You used to laugh when I'd turn a photograph facedown to the wall,
said, "Delilah, that's just paper, there ain't no one there at all."
But the instinct is a taproot, it's a code you can't erase,
it's the Gullah in my grammar, it's the Savannah in my pace.

[Chorus]
Auntie Clara told me, "Don't you sweep at night, girl."
"Sweep your kinfolk out the door, sweep 'em to the spirit world."
Auntie Clara told me, "Don't you sweep at night, see?"
"That pluff mud on your boots holds all your family."

[Bridge]
So what phylum is a ghost in? What's the genus of a prayer?
It's a wonder how a memory just hangs there in the air.
It's a science they don't teach you back at UGA in the fall,
how the people that you come from ain't ever gone at all.

[Outro]
So the Sea-Hume's staying put 'til the sun is in the sky.
(beat cuts)
Can't risk you too, Auntie Clara. Can't afford that kind of goodbye.