Tanetze, Mexico – walking hour down mountain to pick coffee
Up Coffee Mountain, Mexico
Up the mountain a mile to Oaxaca,
nestle in toke and sun and sky.
One mile higher for Tanetze
to pick coffee trees entwined with vine.
Rise before sun to big pot of brew,
chase ache and creak of cold and sleep.
Trudge hour down mountain to outpost for picking,
cloudmist rising from river below.
Two lizards fuck in sunlight on tree stump,
pineapples grow right out of the ground.
Cinnamon bark peels from trees,
bananas bunched bend plants down.
Lunch at primitive pole-built campsite
crude cooked over fire, and serious coffee.
Back breaking work standing slant landscape
way above clouds reaching for beans.
End day so tired back up the mountain
almost falling to nothing below.
Bed without dinner too tired to eat,
in cold and darkness to sleep till again.
Happy special picking own coffee
to buy later when carried to town.
– Smith, 3.25.2015
coffee beans drying on our hosts’ roof