It was dusk. In the cool of the evening, as I was enjoying being in my garden, the phone rang. It was Warren calling to say hi. We spoke of this and that, the garden, our time together on holiday, and of his day, walking in the bush. Agreeing that we would be together again in a few days, we said goodbye and I continued with the mission of planting my lemon tree before sundown.
5 minutes later the phone rang again.
“Hi” Warren’s inimitable soft voice resonated.
“Hi” I replied and we both laughed.
“I just wanted to say I love you,” he said, “and I worry that I don’t say that enough.”
I laughed. “Well, I love you too.”
We talked again briefly about seeing each other soon.
“Ok” he said, “I’ll let you get back to planting your lemon tree.”
And these were the last words that were ever exchanged between us.
I still reflect to this day upon our walk through Waverly cemetery only 2 days before this. The image of white marble angels standing tall and frozen against the steely blue ocean have become profound reminders to me that we are travelling, all of us, to somewhere unknown and beyond. On that walk Warren told me of his worry that he may die. Bewildered, I disconnected instead of leaning in, a lament that I struggle with to this day. Even so, Warren’s death has brought me closer to the awareness that our souls have a voice, and that our relationship was a longing for our souls to make dance.
Ever since he died, in the early hours of the next morning after that phone call, the lemon tree, with its lush green leaves and golden fruit has become the medium through which Warren and I communicate our love and our laments, about what was and what wasn’t, about how it was, and how it is, for both of us, as we contemplate the bittersweet mystery of life and death together.
But Flavio the lemon leaf, a messenger who floated between worlds, was not a linear creation.
Late one night on a random piece of paper, some months after Warren had died, I started doodling, as I often do. First a leaf, and then another, until finally, a figure emerged that reminded me of a little Chinese sage.
I have always wanted to write and illustrate books, and when I saw the little leaf sage, I started wondering about him as a main character for a story. And so, unbeknownst to me at the time, I began to draft what was later to become the prologue of Worlds within Worlds.
“Flavio”, little leaf’s name, came to me, as words often do, unexpectedly, with no real thought about what this story would be about. I rarely plan my artworks. Instead, they arrive on the doorstep of my mind, unfolding without my knowing where they will go. I looked up the word Flavio after it came to me. It turns out that Flavio is the Italian variant of the ancient Latin name Flavius, which stems from the Latin word flavus meaning golden or yellow. It seemed somehow fitting that this leaf should be part of a tree whose fruits are golden.
But then as the tale unfolded, Flavio, the golden one, took me on a wild ride to meet that man I love.
Poetry seemed a particularly evocative genre in which to explore the complexity of this sensate but paradoxically mystical journey, a meandering between worlds, into a place both unknown and at the same time very familiar. In my travels, my soul connected with the divine soul of the world, as I discovered Warren’s essence, the intangible but deeply felt love that he may have been hinting at in our last conversation. And as I connected to his soul, I connected to the bigger soul, something that I can only imagine, but somehow sense is absolutely true.
With the belief that all life forms have a soul, Flavio is the embodied poetry of this spiritual understanding. Leaves fall, leaves float, and in their seeming ordinariness, we rarely stop to think about their journey, and their experience of the world. This poem explores the mystery of being from the perspective of all living beings, allowing the mind to wonder and wander between the worlds that we experience in life and imagine about death.
If this story has moved you, you can find Worlds Within Worlds in the shop.