A Taste of Headland

A taste of salt on the lips, granite underfoot, and a heartbeat that answers the surf. We bring you a richly textured reading of Headland by poet Jessica Klein-Gibaud, a piece that turns a simple shoreline into a mirror for the body and a ledger for time. Through crisp images of dense brown stones, white water sifting through fissures, and wind skimming the surface of the eyes, the poem guides us from sensation to insight without a single wasted word.

As we narrate, you’ll hear how small details carry big truths: cloth that clings to the pillar of a thigh, a crown-of-the-head thrum that syncs with the tide, a steady line of deep blue that makes our soft impermanence plain. Jessica’s language finds the quarter line where observer and landscape meet, then holds us there long enough to feel what changes. The coast is not scenery; it’s an active force shaping memory, attention, and humility. By aligning heartbeat with surf, the poem shows how nature can reset noisy minds and clarify what matters.

We share a few framing notes about Jessica’s eye for travel and observation, then let the poem do its work—clean, direct, and resonant. Whether you come for the imagery, the meditation on mortality, or the brief, bracing calm of a well-read lyric, you’ll leave with one indelible picture that sticks. Press play when you need three minutes of atmosphere that doesn’t drift, and if the final lines catch you the way they caught us, pass it on.

If this reading moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves poetry and place, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find their own headland.

This poem is available in Voice Within: a Storybook by Storytellers Edition II.

Transcript

Ocean Imagery Unfolds

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It has an arcing name the crown of the head, a thrum a little more, the dense chocolate brown of these ocean stones, and the white water sifting over and through them pounds with my heart wind cool on the surface of the eyes, grasps and flickers, the edges and sails of a shirt, and cloth clings to the pillar of a thigh, revealing its shape. Mammals are reminded here of their soft impermanence. By the deep blue, a steady line of brute grace of liquid limbs pounding at thousand yarl granite. Excuse the interruption, but do you want to hear the rest of the poem by Jessica? Then subscribe today for the complete poem of Headlands, inclusive of every two weeks, you will receive a new podcast, a new story, a new poem, a new letter by the community of authors and storytellers who have published through Voice Within. So less than two coffees a month, you get to have uh narrated to you by the authors themselves or by myself a collection of stories which will take your breath away and give you that good heart feeling. So subscribe today at voice within dot co that's voice hyphen within dot country.