關於英語廣場美文閱讀

　　閱讀是複雜的認知行為,是為了獲取知識,資訊而產生的互動的過程。對於語言學習者而言,閱讀是語言輸入的重要方式。下面是小編帶來的，歡迎閱讀!

　　篇一

　　Fishing For Jasmine

　　The silent young woman in bed number six is called Jasmine. So am I, but names are only superficial things, floats bobbing on the surface of the water, and we share deeper connections than that. Which is why she fascinates me - why I spend my off-duty time sitting beside her.

　　Today is difficult. The ward heaves with patients and I am kept busy emptying bed-pans, filling out forms, changing dressings. Finally, late in the afternoon, I get a few moments to make coffee, to take it over to the orange plastic chair beside her bed. I am thankful to be off my feet, glad to be in her company once again.

　　'Hello, Jasmine,' I say, as if greeting myself.

　　She does not reply. Jasmine never replies. She is down too deep.

　　Like me, she has been sea-damaged. I too am the daughter of a fisherman, so I bait my words like fish-hooks, cast them into her ears, imagine them sinking down through cold, dark water. Down to wherever she may be.

　　'I have little time today,' I tell her, touching her hair.

　　With Jasmine, it is always difficult not to touch. She is that rare thing, a truly beautiful woman. Because of this, people invent reasons to walk by. I catch them looking, drinking her in, feeding on her. They are barracuda, all of them. Wheelchair-pushing porters who slow to a crawl when they near her bed. Roaming visitors with greedy eyes. Doctors who stop, draw the thin screen of curtain, and continually re-examine that which does not need examination.

　　Great beauty is something Jasmine and I do not share. I am glad of it.

　　'Your father may be here soon,' I say. 'Last week he said he would come.'

　　Jasmine says nothing. Her left eyelid flickers, perhaps.

　　It is two months since the incident on her father's fishing boat, since she fell overboard, sank, became entangled in the nets. It was some time before anyone noticed, then there was panic. Her father hauled her back on board and sailed for home. When he finally arrived, he carried ashore what he thought was his daughter's body.

　　'Jasmine,' I whisper. I want her to take our baited name. I want her to swallow it.

　　Fortunately, there was a doctor in the village that morning, a young man visiting relatives. It was he who brought this drowned woman back from the brink, he who told me her story. She opened her eyes, he said, looked up at her father and spoke a single word - then sank again, this time into coma.

　　Barracuda. That is what Jasmine said.

　　When her father visits, he touches her hair, kisses her cheek, sits in the orange plastic chair at the side of her bed and holds her hand. Like my own father, he has the big, brown, life-roughened hands of a fisherman. He too smells of the sea, and pretends he is a good, simple man.

　　Jasmine. We share so much, we are almost one.

　　I remember early mornings, my hair touched to wake me, my father lifting me half-asleep from my bed, carrying me, dropping me into his boat. His voice rough in my ear, his hands rough on my skin. I never wanted to go, but I was just a child. He did as he wished.

　　I remember salt water, hot sun, my mother shrinking on the shore. I remember the rocking of the boat, the screams of the gulls.

　　'Jasmine, you have a life inside you. Can't you hear it calling?'

　　Nothing.

　　The ward door bangs, and I see Jasmine's father walking towards us, carrying flowers. He smiles at me.

　　Even in death, my own child had my father's smile, and Jasmine's will have this man's. I know it.

　　He stops by her bed and touches her hair. Something stirs deep inside me. I watch Jasmine's eyelids, waiting for her to bite.

　　篇二

　　A Rose For Marly

　　It was one week before high school graduation when I found the note. I didn’t know it then, but by the end of that week, my life would be changed forever.

　　I had been cleaning out my locker, looking through old papers and taking down all the pictures I had taped to the door. Everything seemed to hold memories from the past year, so I was careful not to throw away anything with sentimental value. I found the note on the top shelf of my locker, laying on top of my biology book. It had my name , Marly, printed neatly at the top, and though I didn’t recognize the handwriting, I thought that it was probably from one of my friends. But as I read it, I realized that it couldn't be. It was signed, 'from a secret admirer.' I knew I shouldn't take it seriously, but I couldn't stop my heart from beating fast or my face from turning red.

　　I kept thinking that it was just a prank. But who could've written something so sweet and touching just for a good laugh? I heard laughter from the end of the hall, but when I looked down there I saw that those laughing were paying no attention to me.

　　That evening I kept replaying the words of the note in my head. I reread it so many times during my last hour class, I almost had it memorized.

　　We never spent any time together, it said, but in my mind we did... In my mind we shared so much... from our first kiss to popcorn at the movie theater on our first date. We laughed at inside jokes that no one else got, you taught me how to dance in my backyard. Of course, none of those things really happened... I only imagined them. Outside of my mind we never existed as a couple, you never even knew my true feelings for you. And I'm afraid you never will if I don't tell you now. Please meet me Friday night after the prom, in the park.

　　I spent that entire evening thinking about the note and who could've written it. It wasn't every day I got a note from someone who had been admiring me from afar.

　　The next day at school, I showed the note to my best friend, Christy. We sat down by our lockers, musing over who the mysterious person could be. Every time a boy walked by I contemplated the question: Could it be him? I tried to act like it wasn't important to me. After all, it could just be a cruel joke someone was playing on me and I would look stupid if I made a big deal out of it.

　　By the end of third hour, everyone knew about the note I had received. At noon, a crowd had gathered around my locker. Some wanted to see the note but I was cautious of who I let read it. I guarded it as if it were some great treasure, and to me, it was.

　　"What if its him?" Diane Johansen said, pointing in his direction and laughing. She started doing a dead-on impersonation of Jimmy. I couldn't help but laugh as Diane talked with a stutter and shook, as Jimmy often did. I instantly regretted it. I looked at him. I didn't see love or admiration in his eyes, I saw pain.

　　Throughout the rest of the day I kept thinking about Jimmy. He had lived across the street from me for years, yet I knew so little about him. I remembered my mother telling me to be nice to him when I was younger. She said that he needed a friend. When I asked her why he acted so different, she told me that his mother had done bad things when she was pregnant with him. It wasn't until I was older that I really understood this. I would occasionally wave at him on the street, but not if my friends were with me. I tried to make myself feel better by thinking that I had at least treated him better than others had.

　　Jimmy was pleasantly interesting. Sometimes I could see in his room through his window as I passed by. He was often playing his guitar, or sitting at his desk writing. After I got the note, I wondered if he had been writing things for me. From then on I tried to see Jimmy through the window. It was my only way of looking into his world. I wondered if my admirer had ever done the same.

　　One evening, I got a call from Christy.

　　"I think I know who your admirer is!" she shrieked.

　　My heart pounded. "Who?"

　　"You're not going to believe this, but I think its Russell Moore! At church I overheard him say you were cute! Can you believe it?"

　　There was a long silence.

　　"Well, aren't you excited?" she asked.

　　"I guess," I said.

　　"Who do you want it to be?" she asked.

　　I couldn't think of anyone but Jimmy so I said that I didn't know.

　　Later that evening, I considered writing Jimmy a letter. I thought I could be an 'admirer' myself. He thinks I hate him. He thinks I’m like everyone else. What if I don't get the chance to tell him different? But I decided against it. I guess I wasn't as brave as my secret admirer was. It was strange. I wondered if I was falling in love with him. All of a sudden I wanted to see him, talk to him, hear his voice. I wondered why I felt that way.

　　篇三

　　A Promise of Spring

　　Early in the spring, about a month before my grandpa's stroke, I began walking for an hour every afternoon. Some days I would walk four blocks south to see Grandma and Grandpa. At eighty-six, Grandpa was still quite a gardener, so I always watched for his earliest blooms and each new wave of spring flowers.

　　I was especially interested in flowers that year because I was planning to landscape my own yard and I was eager to get Grandpa's advice. I thought I knew pretty much what I wanted -- a yard full of bushes and plants that would bloom from May till November.

　　It was right after the first rush of purple violets in the lawns and the sudden blaze of forsythia that spring that Grandpa had a stroke. It left him without speech and with no movement on his left side. The whole family rallied to Grandpa. We all spent many hours by his side. Some days his eyes were eloquent -- laughing at our reported mishaps, listening alertly, revealing painful awareness of his inability to care for himself. There were days, too, when he slept most of the time, overcome with the weight of his approaching death.

　　As the months passed, I watched the growing earth with Grandpa's eyes. Each time I was with him, I gave him a garden report. He listened, gripping my hand with the sure strength and calm he had always had. But he could not answer my questions. The new flowers would blaze, peak, fade, and die before I knew their names.

　　Grandpa's illness held him through the spring and on, week by week, through summer. I began spending hours at the local nursery, studying and choosing seeds and plants. It gave me special joy to buy plants I had seen in Grandpa's garden and give them humble starts in my own garden. I discovered Sweet William, which I had admired for years in Grandpa's garden without knowing its name. And I planted it in his honor.

　　As I waited and watched in the garden and by Grandpa's side, some quiet truths emerged. I realized that Grandpa loved flowers that were always bloom; he kept a full bed of roses in his garden. But I noticed that Grandpa left plenty of room for the brief highlights. Not every nook of his garden was constantly in bloom. There was always a treasured surprise tucked somewhere.

　　I came to see, too, that Grandpa's garden mirrored his life. He was a hard worker who understood the law of the harvest. But along with his hard work, Grandpa knew how to enjoy each season, each change. We often teased him about his life history. He had written two paragraphs summarizing fifty years of work, and a full nine pages about every trip and vacation he'd ever taken.

　　In July, Grandpa worsened. One hot afternoon arrived when no one else was at his bedside. He was glad to have me there, and reached out his hand to pull me close.

　　I told Grandpa what I had learned -- that few flowers last from April to November. Some of the most beautiful bloom for only a month at most. To really enjoy a garden, you have to plant corners and drifts and rows of flowers that will bloom and grace the garden, each in its own season.

　　His eyes listened to every word. Then, another discovery: "If I want a garden like yours, Grandpa, I'm going to have to work." His grin laughed at me, and his eyes teased me.

　　"Grandpa, in your life right now the chrysanthemums are in bloom. Chrysanthemums and roses." Tears clouded both our eyes. Neither of us feared this last flower of fall, but the wait for spring seems longest in November. We knew how much we would miss each other.

　　Sitting there, I suddenly felt that the best gift I could give Grandpa would be to give voice to the testimony inside both of us. He had never spoken of his testimony to me, but it was such a part of his life that I had never questioned if Grandpa knew. I knew he knew.

　　"Grandpa," I began -- and his grip tightened as if he knew what I was going to say -- "I want you to know that I have a testimony. I know the Savior lives. I bear witness to you that Joseph Smith is a prophet. I love the Restoration and joy in it." The steadiness in Grandpa's eyes told how much he felt it too. "I bear witness that President Kimball is a prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is true, Grandpa. Every part of me bears this witness."

　　"Grandpa," I added quietly, "I know our Father in Heaven loves you." Unbidden, unexpected, the Spirit bore comforting, poignant testimony to me of our Father's love for my humble, quiet Grandpa.

　　A tangible sense of Heavenly Father's compassionate awareness of Grandpa's suffering surrounded us and held us. It was so personal and powerful that no words were left to me -- only tears of gratitude and humility, tears of comfort.

　　Grandpa and I wept together.

　　It was the end of August when Grandpa died, the end of summer. As we were choosing flowers from the florist for Grandpa's funeral, I slipped away to Grandpa's garden and walked with my memories of columbine and Sweet William. Only the tall lavender and white phlox were in bloom now, and some baby's breath in another corner.