Beneath this cloak

Sometimes when I wake up I can still taste it. It is something that I have floated through in the quiet night, it is the velvet darkness within. It is the perfect poem on the tip of my tongue. So close I can smell it, sense it, taste it. It can’t be held or kept, but I have it. It can’t be known but I know it. Peace. Peace beyond peace. A peace that is pure and total. It transcends every feeling that I have known, it is above and below the waves of this life like the earth and sky are beyond the leaves of the tree. Beyond ecstasy beyond bliss. Wider, smoother, more free. The most exquisite chocolate melting in the mouth, the rising oak vaults of a cathedral, birdsong crystal in the sunlight. All perfect, wonderful experiences, perfect expressions of life yet they do not touch this. In some way they are contained by it. In some way it is inside of all of this. Like a great cloak of stars that falls about my shoulders. Like a song so exquisite that it contains all music, the music of feeling, the music of water, the music of every note ever played, the music of every word ever spoken. A cloak woven from threads of everything, it is golden and has no colour, it is deep as the night sky and bright as dew drop light. It rests around me, my life is framed by this, the colours that I paint with are drawn from this essence. I can feel how it wants to fill me. I can feel it is there deep at the centre. I pray to surrender to it and I feel how it comes to my command. It is the target at which I fire the arrows of my poems that all fall hopelessly short. It is what I aspire to be worthy of, and what I hope to become. It is all ambition and every desire. It is the end of dreams and the fire where my ideas of myself turn to cold ash. Merciless yet the source of the one mercy. It is everything I ever wanted and everything I ever received. In this place that is no place, beneath this cloak that is no cloak there is only rest. There is only peace. Vibrant rainbow peace. Whalesong ocean peace. Dawn lake peace. It is close, so close. Hush. Listen. Listen. This was always for you. My love, my love this was always for you.