LAST YEAR

poetry Blaise Kielar

Last year I smiled at the honeybees
as they went about their work,
all buzz and hover
along a wall of sweetness.

This year I stare at lonely blossoms
on a silent sun strewn wall
and try to convince myself
that they will come back.

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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.