Golden Threads Poem by Robert Merrett

What it is this shell I live within?
This temporary garment fading in the sun.
A shining cloak to the eye, mine and yours.
It's woven cloth may be washed and oh so well presented.
But those impermanent golden threads fray,
They wear thin and lose their buttons.
It is not I,
Yet,
To the world it is....
And to the "me" if I allow it.
No, no.
The I is the vulnerable, naked, genuine soul.
Oft the uneasy prisoner of the shell.
Displaced,
Hidden.
Absent from it's greater course, for an interlude,
Until the shell is cracked.
‘Til the threadbare cloak is hung on a peg
And I can be,
And you can see.