Gradual Clearing

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.