Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Two Oranges

Snow hangs on the fence;

the air is cold blue,

death is a dark window

I am learning to feel,

Before me two oranges

in a brown bowl

I hold them,

feel their weight rise

through my fingers into my arms.

In this silence before sleep

I place two oranges

within the rim of our lives.

– Laurence Hutchman

The Shape of the Earth

Here the earth curves before our eyes—
rolls away, down toward clear horizons

Here the earth is rich in cold black forms,
rolls to the movement of the hip and thigh.

And here it strikes your eye as a page
as you write upon it now in new forms.

These plants and trees become words,
the hills and ponds, the heart and eyes.

The land is new in this strange light
where the city no longer holds,

but you stand alone before the horizon and
the light sounds above the earth

in the clarity of a chime. And you write upon
the wide earth under the silver span of

sky, over the rolling land where now
you feel the rim of the circle

and the power of the line.

– Laurence Hutchman