Headland

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.

voice-within.co
voicewithin_anthology
voicewithin_publications

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome To Voice Within
• 0:08 Settle In With Tea And Imagination
• 0:40 Introducing Poet Jessica Klein Dubois
• 1:07 Headland Is Announced
• 1:25 The Poem Begins
• 2:05 Mortality And Nature Intertwine

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Voice Within, a collection of short stories, letters and poems narrated to you. Get cozy, warm cup of tea in hand, take your ears and imagination to places a number of authors aspire to take you with their tales. So we have another piece here from Jessica Klein Dubois, a young Belgian poet who loves to travel and is a great observer of the world around her, including in this poem called Headland, which was written in observation of themes of connectedness, mortality, and nature. So it's called Headland, and I'm honored to actually narrate this second piece of hers, um, Enjoy Headland by Jessica Klein Gibro. 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 yellow granite, and you stand on the quarter line halfway across the page in my right iris, the center of your own eventual spiral, unknowingly and quickly, becoming prey to a certain caliber of poem.