Shingle under sole, walking over

Silvermine shore with Shelley. She says

with sorrow: ‘I’m not a detail person.’
Ferry to Lantau Island, each of us mistook

the time and destination yet we still meet. Beneath

fog thick as curds, the world’s biggest Buddha.
Japanese tourists snapping approximations:

What may be a leg, the stone petals of a lotus.

Faces in the fog: scissor cuts in pale cloth.
Sightseeing thwarted, the sea gives grace

to a clumsy day, heaviness of stored tears

lifting as we lie in the sand, light receding.
Sky darkening at the edges, old parchment.

Shelley offers the word ‘sonorous’,

the soul’s voice: bell tongue against sound-bow