Each month we will be featuring a guest writer and this month's contribution is from Winston A. Wheaton . When Winston sent the poem to us this what how he described it.

It is already a critical success at my end. It made my father's face shine and my daughter weep, when I recited it. That's about as much validation as anything has a right to.

A little set-up. I had just returned on the Tarbert-Uig ferry, picked up my car in the ferry lot, and headed in a general southwest meander. Near MacLeod castle, I saw a sign for a coral beach and followed the narrowing road to its end, beside an emerald green pasture. It was May, 1997, and the sun was hot coming through the windshield, but bright and crisp outside, like the air; the wind a hair tousler and jacket snapper. I walked across the pasture, ignoring the warning sign for the bull (I didn't see any English--ha), climbed over a section of tumbled down stone fence, and mounted a low knoll, where, from the precipice, the view down Loch Dunvegan inspired me with reverential awe. Thus...

The next time I go to Skye,
by god, I'll have a kite to fly.

How unexpected...
over a hole in the stone fence,
the separation tumbled down,
across the green pasture
at the edge of the coral beach
...to find the hole
that goes all the way to Heaven
where God sighs in Christ-bought patience
galing into the world breaths of life
to save us from choking on our own exhaust
and the curse caught in our throat.

I think no speech
survives that holy wind...
no made thought...
nothing not Divine, the burnishing.
I wanted to say, "I'm sorry",
but I couldn't speak...
think it...
and I wanted Him to know.

Maybe if I write it on a kite
and launch it into that terrible loving wind
it'll fly right up to his face.
The next time I go to Skye,
by god, I'll have a kite to fly.


Winston A. Wheaton
Aviemore, Scotland

May, 1997

You can reach Winston here.

You can find more articles in the archive under Guest Writer's Corner