2023 Third Place Winner - Elise Withey, 'Future of Space Travel c.1783'

ELISE WITHEY

Third Prize - 2023 Tower Poetry Competition, 'The Planets'

Future of Space Travel c.1783

The hot air balloon rises and the man inside

reaches for the apple sky

with two soft hands.

He thinks that he could hold its weight

the way a fish bears the ocean on its back

unthinking, that it would sink and settle round

each shoulder joint, each human curve;

he reaches, dreaming Atlas, dares to hope

that the press of blue to shoulders, sun to spine,

the weight of sky on hands

will leave, in the bareness,

some fingerprint —

Here is a story about desire: the first man to go up in a hot air balloon

was the first to die in one.

His balloon sliced the clouds neatly, a second Fall,

baring white flesh and canvas, seeds and core,

it was red and when the

              fabric tore the hot air inside burst out

                                                                  a warning gasp

Jean François Pilatre de Rozier (1754–1785). The first aeronaut.