Two poems by Leah Browning

Dinner with Mohamoud

He tells a story about arriving in America
during wintertime.  This was a foreign
climate, and winter had been described

in great detail.  He was prepared
for cold, for snow, for icicles
hanging from every branch and rooftop.

In his suitcase, he had a warm coat
and gloves.

The airplane stopped on the way to Minnesota,
landing briefly in San Diego, and he pressed
his face against the small oval of window

for his first glimpse of America.  Outside,
on the tarmac below, people moved about
in shorts and short-sleeved shirts,

their arms and legs bare, their pale skin
impervious to what he could only imagine
were freezing temperatures. 

Now, in the restaurant, his eyes are dark
with fatigue.  His sons are in a refugee camp
in Kenya, his wife dead.  But tonight

they are close by, and it is all right to go on
laughing faintly about the nuances of weather,
unaware that we are another year away

from the airport where he will again see his boys,
almost men, their backs unbowed despite the weight
of all these shifts in the atmosphere.

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