Hills gasped in bursts. Glass door

takes sun in its mouth, spits it back.

Swings open and slides my reflection

off its surface. While I'm leaving

again these dark hills, their light-string's threaded

through me; I see them

in every skyline. I hear them called

names, spoken in German. I smell

them damp and crushed in my hand.

I hold wrinkled rivers, ocean's fuss,

rumble, hills a string

of balding heads, and

sky's thin slice above – young sky!

It is always the year I leave.

And in 1947 my father is always traveling

with his father from their bombed-out London

life to a pinprick on the map called

Norfolk Island. They are driven from the airport

in the island's only taxi. They get out

and their new kind of England

is empty. My father,

a child, finds a trail of white buttons

like speech bubbles

leading down to shore.