Giraffes

Beyond the brassy sun-stare where each shade
Crouches beneath its substance at mid-noon,
The tall giraffes are gathered in a glade
Grazing the green fruit of the midday moon.
Patched with sienna shadows of the jungle,
In pencil-slender attitude they stand;
Grotesque in camouflage, each curve and angle
Is merged into the backcloth of the land.

These circus creatures of a poet’s dreaming
Whose destiny on silent strings is spun,
Are patterned in design of nature’s scheming
To move unseen through dappled woods and dun.
Strange genesis in which the substance seeming
The shadow, is the secret of the sun!