1.
Like soft yellow clouds speckled in brown,
the Masai giraffes cross the Kenyan safari.
I was a giraffe once, too, in my mind,
even though I was the shortest in my class,
hanging on to high branches
to be nourished from above—
my imagination, books, arts.
On the earth, lonely, not matching my classmates,
vigilantly searching from my distance after possible dangers.
A child in the Ramat Sharet elementary school in Jerusalem
with her head up in the mountains of Africa,
reading repeatedly ‘Lobengulu King of Zulu’ by Nachum Guttman.