My mother at home in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania
Dust of the coal mines
on the window sill
lightened to gray
by a gentle snow,
our simple clapboard house
also freshened from within
by the exotic smell of oranges,
a seeming miracle
delivered only at the holidays
from some far off land,
an extravagant purchase
that triumphantly shouts
“Christmas” to us kids –
no coal in the stockings this year!
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
The shock of birds of prey came home to roost this week on our suburban
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.
