‘Being a true account of the voyage of Vincenzo Lunardi’

Fire

Late September morning,
and a chill in the Edinburgh air,
but the gathering crowds are warm
with wonder, and the ladies feverish
for the hot-blooded adventurer –
the man who knows how to fly.

Thirty bottles of oil of vitriol
into a vat of iron filings, and the limp
sack of silk expands and hardens,
until the sky is circus-striped
and roaring like a lion.

Air

They ascend to a fanfare:
a man, a dog, a cat, and a pigeon
in its balloon-shaped cage.

The dignitaries hold forth
on progress, science, things to come.

The ladies hold on tight to their
Lunardi bonnets, puffed and almost
weightless with the thought of flight.

Water

Forty-six miles floating across farms,
and gardens, and then the Firth of Forth.
Inchkeith, Inchcolm, the Isle of May,
seen for the first time
through the eyes of gulls, of gannets.

Two row boats far below,
the dashing of their oars
circling silver, over and over

everything slowed to the pace
of separation, of being above.

Earth

A lone farmhand in a field –
the only witness to this
Devilish Descent,

the Last Days come sudden
in a cloud of pink silk,
and the Angel of Death in
powdered wig, stumbling
across the muddy furrows.