First Flight

We're going fast now, faster than the wheels
rumbling below can grip the ground,
and we are rumbling, too, part of a sound
too big and low to hear, but that still feels
very odd. The little baby squeals,
halfway scared, half happy. Air begins to pound
us upward 'til the trees look small and round,
and up some more until a thick cloud seals
us off from everything on earth below.
The bits of sky beneath us seem so still.
It looks as though we're going very slow.
Strange to think that by lunchtime we will
be back on the land in a faraway place,
where time moves along at a normalish pace.