Honeymoon Flight
Below, the patchwork earth, dark hems of hedge,
The long grey tapes of road that bind and loose
Villages and fields in casual marriages:
We bank above the small lough and farmhouse
And the sure green world goes topsy-turvy
As we climb out of our familiar landscape.
The engine noises change. You look at me.
The coastline slips away behind the wing-tip.
And launched right off the earth by force of fire,
We hang, miraculous, above the water,
Dependent upon the invisible air
To keep us airborne and to bring us further.
Ahead of us the sky’s a geyser now.
A calm voice talks of cloud yet we feel lost.
Air-pockets jolt our fears and down we go.
Travellers, at this point, can only trust.
by Seamus Heaney
from Death of a Naturalist
Faber and Faber, 1966