[a few years ago i thought i'd experiment with the villanelle-form; i was also a student of kundalini psycho-spirituality at the time, so this image of the basket of trees, meaning the marvelously undulating and spiraling forms of the camphors and rhododendrons that surround our house, form-echoes of both the path of kundalini and the structure of the nervous system, was very meaningful to me:]
I live in a basket made of trees
Whose arching boughs uplift my mind
Flickering like leaves tossed in the breeze.
Surface and depth, shadow and light,
My soul space changes always because
I live in a basket made of trees.
The view from my windows grants the gift of height,
Looking all round at the actions of humans
Flickering like leaves tossed in the breeze.
The dark penumbra of these pensive crowns
Are pierced by the penetrating spiritual light;
Flick’ring through this basket of trees,
And woven with rain refreshing the boughs,
Making blissful this dappled experience of time.
Of living in a basket made of trees,
with flickering leaves tossed and changed by the breeze.