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 First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202311 November 2023 · Subscriberthon 2023 On the final day of Subscriberthon, Overland’s most important members get to have their say Editorial Team BORIS A quick guide to another year of Overland, from your trusty feline, Boris. I liked the ginger cat story, though it made my human cry. I liked the talking cat, too, but I’m definitely in the “not wasting my time learning to talk” camp. But reading is good. And writing is fun, though it’s been challenging […] 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 9 November 20239 November 2023 · Subscriberthon 2023 On the second-last day of Subscriberthon, Overland’s co-chief editor Evelyn Araluen speaks truth to power Editorial Team To my friends and comrades, I’m not sure if there’s language to communicate how this last month has utterly changed me. This time a few weeks ago the busyness and chaos of bricolage arts and academic labour had so efficiently distracted me from my anxiety about the upcoming referendum that I forgot to prepare myself for its inevitable conclusion.