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Blanket Welcome at Kennedy Airport, a poem by Norbert Krapf


Blanket Welcome at Kennedy Airport
                                                        —for Peyton, my grandson
by Norbert Krapf 

There was a small pink, blue
and green blanket we sent
to Bogotá for your mother

to be wrapped in when she
came to us in New York.
When her plane arrived

at the gate at Kennedy Airport
a beautiful young Colombian
woman with long black hair

stepped off the plane smiling.
When we walked up to her
she placed baby Elizabeth Maria

in that blanket in my arms.
I held, beheld, kissed her
and said, “Welcome, Love!”

There was no wall whatsoever.
No insults on any tough lips.
We wrapped and held her in love.

Which is what we give you also,
her beautiful Colombian and German
son with dark light-filled eyes.


Norbert Krapf's latest collections are The Return of Sunshine (2018) and Indiana Hill Country Poems (2019). His adaptation of his Catholic Boy Blues collection (2015) into a play was performed in June in the Indy Eleven Theatre of Indy Fringe, and he is currently working on a new play, Andrew and the Bells of Lohr