By Mark Laskowski
Here in the highlands whatever they shout immediately converts to whatever is heard, if only by those who throng to bask in these reverberations. Echoes can be quite the draw. The canyons help the mountains stand, usually in a silence the aforementioned cannot imagine to be of inseparable twin design. But it’s true. The quiet before their “Here we are!" yodels is no different than the quiet that will soon return after they're shut up or leave of their own accord. Then? Only the drone of bees among flowers, calls and songs of birds among trees, deer chewing laurel and the babble of slender brooks, quicksilver and cold — on and on in the thin-aired sunshine or the keening chill of star-stabbed night. If you could hear all this music merge into a human voice, what would it say of the echoes now gone? Could it comment through its constant laughter? Would it care enough to mention that of such matters it never cares to speak at all?
Mark Weston Laskowski currently lives in the town of Longmeadow, located in the western part of Massachusetts. His day job for the past five years has been (and is) that of digital marketing copywriter. He has written poetry and short stories off and on for decades but thus far has not been published.
Louis Staeble, fine arts photographer and poet, lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in “Blue Hour”, “Cenacle”, “Clever Fox” “Conclave Journal”, “Elsewhere Magazine”, “GFT Magazine”, “Fifth Wednesday Journal”, “Four Ties Literary Review”, “Goatsmilk Magazine”, “Havik”, “Inklette”, “Light- A Journal”, “Little Somethings Press”, “Olney Magazine”, “Rubbertop Magazine”, “Sunspot Lit”, “The Helix”, ”Tupelo Quarterly”, “Twist In Time”, and “Windmill”. 2016, 2017 and 2018 as part of the Wood County Invitational.
Instagram@louiestaeble Web page: staeblestudioa.weebly.com