UNDER THE APRICOT TREE I LEARNED
WHERE WE CAME FROM


My three year old nephew drank
his milk quickly to save
the ice cube from drowning.

He ate his broccoli when
I mentioned those little trees
will help him grow tall.

When André told me,
"The sun needs no hat because
it is not cold," I asked him

"Where did you come from? "
He cupped my ear in his hands
and whispered, "No-land."

Not Neverland, home of the lost
boys, the Peter Pan story
which he has yet to read

not Princeton, New Jersey,
the place where he was born
on the first day of 1970

not from Mom's womb and
Dad's sperm, words my sister
had already taught him

but simply No-land,
not of this earth,
the realm of the invisible

where everything we see
has its rest, not the ground
where this tree stands

but from elsewhere, where
these apricots and buttercups
take on their glow of gold

and in that silence flowing
between us, we knew why
the spring geese flew north.


Peter Y. Chou, Palo Alto, 1-1-92


© Peter Y. Chou— from Well Spring Journal #1, Fall 1992

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