Published in Overland Issue Print Issue 198 Autumn 2010 · Writing / Main Posts Your Sea Stuart Cooke You’d say this grass is a slab of light green sea and the myriad white flowers scattered through it the tips of waves whipped up by the wind, or it might have snowed with these flowers, most of which have now melted on a warm, grassy bed. These are your modes, in which varieties are crystallised into drops of perception. My poems begin as surrealist mess, you say, which my conscious mind refines into sense. It’s your world talk. We are specks of pollen floating; your poems trace the outline of two at the moment of their collision (and their gentle parting is the closing of the poem’s mouth). You weave webs of wispy glass, thin fingers of light set against backdrops of heavier material clusters: what we all see but never speak. This poem, then, is a return to the sight of the already spoken. Stuart Cooke Stuart Cooke’s latest chapbook, Departure into Cloud, was published by Vagabond Press in 2013. His full-length collection is Edge Music (IP, 2011). He is a lecturer in creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. More by Stuart Cooke › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 20 March 20262 April 2026 · Main Posts Final results of the 2025 Judith Wright Poetry Prize Editorial team Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize seeks outstanding poetry from new and emerging writers. This year’s judges, Shastra Deo, Harry Reid and […] 20 March 202620 March 2026 · Main Posts Final results of the 2025 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize Editorial team Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize seeks outstanding original short fiction of up to 3000 words themed loosely around the notion […]