Gradual Clearing poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry

Late in the day the fog

wrung itself out like a sponge

in glades of rain,

sieving the half-invisible

cove with speartips;

then, in a lifting

of wisps and scarves, of smoke-rings

from about the islands, disclosing

what had been wavering

fishnet plissé as a smoothness

of peau-de-soie or just-ironed

percale, with a tatting

of foam out where the rocks are,

the sheened no-color of it,

the bandings of platinum

and magnesium suffusing,

minute by minute, with clandestine

rose and violet, with opaline

nuance of milkweed, a texture

not to be spoken of above a whisper,

began, all along the horizon,

gradually to unseal

like the lip of a cave

or of a cavernous,

single, pearl-

engendering seashell.