If Only These Adobe Walls Could Speak (Inspired by Consuella)

If only these adobe walls could speak—

Who? What? When ? They might yield

answers to me.

Settlers here in this harsh desert land, rough

and ready folks with their ambitious dreams.

Prospectors, perhaps, in search of precious

metal and gems it would seem. This oven

baked land would yield little more than

adobe mud affording modest shelter from

the merciless New Mexico elements.

Hearty folks were here, I suppose, they

who battled the test of time and the

elements for a while. They who eventually

succumbed to the blistering inferno of the

high country sun.

The disheartened, they who died or moved

away, they the weather-worn drifters

leaving the natural facade of adobe as

a testament to mankind, his mortality

and vanquished dreams.

Or could be, having struck it rich,

they became the past generation

of San Francisco elite. Either or?

It’s a choice if only in my imaging.

What do these time-scorned and

weather-worn adobe walls speak

to me so eloquently?

                           -30-

Chris Hanch 10-22-2021