Giraffe in Juárez

There’s a giraffe in the central park
of Ciudad Juárez.
Simple as that: a towering, Upper-Case
and lonely giraffe.
I studied her as she gazed at the sun
sinking behind the hill that says in Spanish: Read the Bible.
She remembered her savanna, the acacia
leaves on which she nibbled
after escaping from the jaws of hungry lions.
Here, in the north of Mexico, things are easier;
they treat her well, as if she were a tourist.
The squealing brakes of buses
still make her ears perk,
as do the generous children who pretend
she’s an overgrown cat.
Juárez is her circus, savannah and zoo.
No one knows how she got here,
if some bureaucrat bought her while on safari
in order to adorn his new park,
or if she arrived on her own, by bus,
in search of a job, like everyone else here.