This Jura Night Cycling

Here's a poem I wrote about cycling back to my B&B on Jura a couple of summers back. For those who don't know the place, Jura is an island off the west coast of Scotland. Summers on Jura can be midge-riddled, storm-soaked and wind-blasted, but quite magnificent in their own way. There are more deer than people and the hills are as starkly impressive as anywhere in Scotland

                  This Jura Night Cycling

                    from Craighouse to Knockrome fuelled

by the hotel’s slow-poured Murphys you

raise the wild Paps wind with the holy

fury of your pedalling, send it

streaming through the spruce trees, send

the Corran river streaming under its grey-stone

bridge into the black-waved Sound and somewhere

in the drenched hills the hinds running

faster than they have ever run because you’re racing

breakneck down a dark island road as if the whole

glorious shebang of wind river deer even the radiant

wheeling of the cloud-scrubbed stars this one Jura night

is down to you