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Pennine Platform

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Pennine Platform Issue No.54

John Duffy

from No.54
By Danes' Dyke

We sit on the edge to eat.
Below our feet sea birds
slide through layers of space,

fulmar's hard glide swerves
to fit in a cleft, sit safe
on a sloping ledge.

Above the cliffs, a bulge
of air stitched by swifts
as they read the invisible

swell and slip of wind
shoved up by the rim
of sea and land,

where a kestrel finds
a spot: hangs still
as a hook: swoops

to kill. A stack of gulls
is a tower in the air,
a slow mill, turning

below a squat cloud,
a leather purse
crammed with silver,

coins about to spill
into the sea that always
breaks and stays unbroken.

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John Duffy