Gold Dust Ancestors

Verse

Chalk white dust on the windowsill

Father's boots by the broken grill

Copper wire hums through the fence

Old drum boiling, thick with scent

Floorboards creak where the miners slept

Rhythm buried but never kept

I feel it move through the soles of my feet

Dust remembers every beat

Pre-Chorus

Can you feel it settle

Deep beneath the skin

Something buried, golden

Waking up again

Chorus

Gold dust ancestors

Under my skin

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin

Gold dust ancestors

Rising within

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin

Verse

Headframe turning slow and wide

Cage door rattling, dark inside

Beadwork threads on my mother's wrist

Every color a name we missed

Shebeen speakers crackle low

Same old rhythm, new tempo

Hands on shoulders, hips in line

Blood remembers the ninety-nine

Pre-Chorus

Can you feel it settle

Deep beneath the skin

Something buried, golden

Waking up again

Chorus

Gold dust ancestors

Under my skin

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin

Gold dust ancestors

Rising within

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin

Bridge

I carry the shaft in my chest

The tunnel, the dark, the unrest

Every hand that dug through the stone

Lives in the marrow of my bone

I am the seam they were chasing

I am the vein still tracing

Gold in the dust, gold in the breath

Nothing they buried was left for death

Chorus

Gold dust ancestors

Under my skin

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin

Gold dust ancestors

Rising within

Gold dust ancestors

Where I begin