Leaving Abundance

Leaving Abundance

We left when the branches were breaking

thick with sweetness—

power lines sagging under Bethel whiteout,

breakfast bowls rinsed in gold.

But enough can turn a horse into a mule.

Even joy, if you squeeze it,

chafes the hide in a rough-grained ride:

doors struck once, then again—workplace raids at dusk,

stories forced quiet mid-sentence.

But the orchard had grown obedient.

The horizon a sentence.

Our first language folded under listening.

We left with salt wet on our wrists,

with the high note of empty market stalls.

We chose the squall—thin air, thin sleep,

the Portsmouth harbor falling from our eyes.

Above us, the birds honked their ragged V

into shape across an iron morning—

The birds keep flying—

out of step with cloud drift,

out of step with the season they rode south.

They know what orchards forget

to teach from the chest:

abundance is not the fruit,

nor the hand reaching for it,

but the leaving—

wild, unmeasured past our faith

that there is more sky

than any one sky can hold.

Rodolfo G Ledesma teaches economics at Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Prior to that, he taught for several years in the U.S. and in Seoul, South Korea, where he won a Best Teacher award in 2010. He has poems published or forthcoming in Compass Rose, The Raven Review, Glint, Behemoth Biennial, The Vagabond’s Verse, and Prudence Dispatch.