Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 Main Posts Bellbird Gully Shari Kocher (after Eugene’s Falls, by A Frances Johnson) inside the invisible atlas of a wave possessor of savage kindness two-tenths of the way the rock wall of self splits the unbound gaze into a spume of wonder the terror and fascination a pencilled hand stencilling in lead the intricacy of water that immutable breadth and depth approaching the very whatness of things grown obdurate skin-cells stretched in vague permutations of sky the sideways lurch of the mind that can never know itself that beguiling illusion of cognition that atomised density of world who can breathe grown thin and stretched on the breath of forgetting what once you will never scale that rock face of wall the nature of nature grown impossibly immense no scale can map the implausible plosives of a future city scant as cloth fungal-flowered mildewed mosquito-mangy progressively receding the impression of distance a mirage a horizon managed best when drawn with dynamite that alluvial blast of time reductive as recompense the doubting earth denied Shari Kocher Bio: Shari Kocher is the author of Foxstruck and Other Collisions (Puncher & Wattmann, 2021) which was Highly Commended for the NSW Premier’s Literature Awards (Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2022), and The Non-Sequitur of Snow (Puncher & Wattmann 2015), which was Highly Commended in the 2015 Anne Elder Awards (Australia). Recent accolades include The Blue Knot Foundation Award (2021), The Peter Steele Poetry Prize (2019), The Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Award (2018) and The University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize (2016). Shari holds a PhD. from Melbourne University, where she sometimes teaches, but more often than not persists as an independent thinker, writer and poet. www.sharikocher.com More by Shari Kocher 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 11 November 202211 November 2022 Main Posts On the last day of Subscriberthon, our amazing online editor gives you one last (very good) reason to subscribe Editorial team What's in store for the last day of Subscriberthon? First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202210 November 2022 Main Posts On the second-last day of Subscriberthon, our favourite editor-duo give you reason #1002 to subscribe to Overland Editorial team What's in store for the second-last day of Subscriberthon?