Ammophila Arenaria
[From the Greek ἄμμος, meaning ‘sand’,
and φίλος, meaning ‘friendship, or love’
and the Latin arenarius: ‘of sand’]
Ammophila Arenaria:
‘Sand-lover of sand’
They found your chosen home
So strange
They had to tell us twice
And felt the need to use
Both Latin words, and Greek
To make some sense of you
In doing so
They doubled down on love
And chosen habitat
Just as yourself
You sink twice deep
Your root-and-rhizome hold
And scatter seed
To stake your claim
And make the shifting sand
Your home
Might humans also
Spread their loving hold
On land like this?
Webster, Clubley, Tennison …
Long-rooted clans
With generations set down deep as precious ore
Like heavy ploughshares
Set down in farmland, mud, and dirt
They keep a watchful hold on Holderness
As digging in
They stay
Even the day
When wind and tide
From rain-worn soil revealed
In Kilnsea’s crumbling cliff
St. Helen’s hoard
Of dear departed dead
Still then, with care,
Their fathers stooped
To pick, to clean, and bring once more
A long-remembered clan
Back home
To fresh dug loam and clay
