I purposefully deny the more likely explanation. Imagining instead that these animals have
come to town with a traveling road show, temporarily housed in a most practical setting--the centrally located, always meant to be used, municipal tennis courts.
Surely, whether a permanent home or a night's stay, this
is not friendly to giraffes, and I don't pretend otherwise. For whimsy's sake, however, let's overlook this feature of the story...or, even worse, take advantage of
the bewitching juxtaposition made possible by this form of containment.
Forget the context, and bend in closer.
The photograph is taken through two sets of chain link
fencing; crucial parts of the animals are hidden by the wire's
crossbars. One can see a crowd of
onlookers across the court, faces framed by layers of countless patchwork boxes. Faces looking. Faces looking at giraffes, faces looking at
children, faces looking somewhat dull.
Then, there's the picture taker, all alone on this side of a fence reaching even above the very tippy-top of the camera's view, looking
intently upward at those giraffes.
And, they look beautiful. Seemingly made more elegant by the reaching metal
structures hemming them in on every side and doing so in the dullest of angular
ways.
The giraffes' necks parade upward;
the swell of their posture can convincingly be described as proud. Their patterned skin and directed ears look
tight with the spring of internal life force. I can almost see and hear the giraffes’ feet making strange clicking
noises on the crusty court surface as they shift aimlessly in place. I picture them moving across the
court slowly, undulating about the boxed space as if nearly imperceptible tides
had been left behind by the volley of balls from the morning’s match
and could be transmitted through the giraffes' endlessly long legs--legs like
antennae (or landslides) vulnerable to any terrestrial disturbance. Why else would they move in this barren
landscape? Why else?
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