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This poem is taken from Poetry Nation 4 Number 4, 1975.

Atlantic Peter Scupham

There's loss in the Atlantic sky,
Smoking her course from sea to sea,
Whitening an absence, till the eye
Aches dazed above the mainmast tree.
      The fuchsia shakes her lanterns out;
      The stiffening winds must go about.

Green breakers pile across the moor
Whose frayed horizons ebb and flow;
Grass hisses where the garden floor
Pulls to a wicked undertow.
      A ragged Admiral of the Red
      Beats up and down the flowerbed.

Granite, unmoving and unmoved,
Rides rough-shod our peninsular
Where curlews wait to be reproved
And petals of a hedge-rose star
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