was going well. A perfect, rosy sow,
a finch, an elephant. Then a giraffe
at the last minute, spring up like Wow,
an exclamation point on legs. A gaff,
or maybe not. Her fringy eyelashes.
Her voice, a bleat soft as a low laugh,
a yard-long tongue that blackly licks leaf-caches
from the sky. She nuzzles her newborn calf,
still wet, eyes shut, legs splayed and sliding,
the two of them improbable riff-raff
of the imagination, hang gliding
off the cliff of reason.

Oh giraffes,
wear your head-lamps, gather around, remind me,
when all seems dark and sane, of mystery.