Foreign Languages

Hearing conversations
Spoken in a foreign tongue
Serves as a reminder of
The folks we live among.

Immigrants from distant shores
Residing where we live
Add a little spiciness
With all they have to give:

Hints of other cultures,
Both alluring and exotic;
Customs that we might just find
A tiny bit quixotic.

When I hear people talking
In a language rich and strange,
I wonder at the meaning of
The words that they exchange.

It’s like a secret code to which
I do not have the key,
And likely what they’re saying
Doesn’t have to do with me.

Yet still, if we could comprehend
A language not our own,
Perhaps the world would cease to be
A xenophobic zone.