From one man’s grief grew a poem that now resonates across aviation and air show circles, including the Blue Angels.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

The reader is transported by Heaney’s illuminating memory: we’re in a school, a photographer is visiting and the girls are ...