"Sitio Belis awaits for us"

"Sitio Belis awaits for us"

(Or: A poem after a coffee enjoyed at the Den)

Over the mountains if Cordillera comes a lovely sitio

Where coffee grows like there is no tomorrow

Whose people enjoy the harvest as if there is bliss

No wonder why the Sitio in Atok is called Belis

From the picking to the drying to the roasting I say

To the selling towards Manila for the brewing that's today

Along with bread like breakfast served earlier

This time as a snack or whatever

Its bitterness be all tempered with sweetness

Be it drunk with sugar or plain

Enough to wake for the daily business

Things to think and do time and again

The taste be reminded of the past

As farmers picked by the hand the berries before it last

If not the nature whose mountains, trees, and breeze

Reminds of the highlands one may seem

But behind this nature there are monsters coming

Same as those in the plain still threatning

Their alibis of order actually is fear provoking

To the people whose peace be tranquility prevailing

I may not surprised that there is resistance brewing

Like the coffee, expect there's battle coming

As the war drums beating expect war rising

It is unsurpirisng that the pickers were poor

Despite the setting whose fertile land as sure

In every bag of coffee is sold cheap

Find it difficult to earn, thus weep

Find difficult to seek good trader, quite rare to meet

And earn least enough, an agreement end feat

Otherwise end nothing, selling for a pittance

Like copra in the lowlands, palay for a grievance

But still can't resist the taste of their cherished coffee

And hope it be sold fair, a sentiment as I speak

Amidst all the unfairness, of pitting all against the weak

By entrenched entities trying to prevail over the meek

The bitter laced with sweet, gives warmth, enough to think

If not compelling this person to write, trying to link

Of coffee and its tillers, the feudal order and its keepers

Of unfairness and its exploiters, of resistance, and others

And this time as I enjoyed their coffee at Escolta
I felt there's an Esperanza
From there I took my note and wrote this poem
As my mind awakened by that coffee known

I may not been there but instead look at its pictures
A nature that's longing, enough for a feature
But in this time of chaos this esperanza be brewing
For these coffee pickers longing
In a country that's still fighting

Perhaps,

There are things more than just coffee

Or its inherited glories

The mountains waited for us

Would be glad if we do must

Waited for us to savour its nature

And thus make us nurture

To be redeemed from anything that binds us

Such as an order that's immature.