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
Chris Powici is a writer and teacher. He lives in Perthshire, Scotland. His poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies and a previous flashquake flash fiction piece ('Push') earned him a Pushcart nomination. A recent collection of his poems, Somehow This Earth, was published in Scotland by Diehard Press.