The vines are withering
yet a few tomatoes
miraculously ripen
some each day.
No birds or insects
defile this fertile fading.
Smaller and less robust
than its summer siblings,
each miniature offering
packs homegrown flavor
into an abbreviated form.
In three bites
only a memory.
My mother at home in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania Dust of the coal mines on the
Exquisite Silence Mountain ridge panoramic view sky draining of blue and white and flowing towards
Cute baby in a high chair poised like a CEO at the head of the
This poem was sparked by an interviewer asking a guy beside me at the Moral
Blaise Kielar received Honorable Mention in the 2022 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize for an excerpt from his memoir in progress, “Be Heard: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop.” He opened Chapel Hill’s first violin shop in 1978 and retired from a music retail career by transitioning Electric Violin Shop into the first worker-owned co-op music store in the United States. He plays jazz violin and clarinet in several bands and leads the Bulltown Strutters, Durham’s community New Orleans brass band.
