Welcome to the ode! A pretty popular poetry form, odes funnel the purest, strongest form of love and passion possible into a poem.

Odes are typically a lyric, free-form poem. Historically, they were focused around important artifacts. In modern poetry, they tend to take ordinary, everyday people, places, and objects, and wax poetic on how beautiful they are.

Modern odes take the mundane and make them magical.

When I wrote this poem, it was a dreary, cool day. I was dying over math and really just wanting to go lay in bed and watch TV. But I had to write an ode for class. And what better object to an ode than the orange? For me, oranges always give me a welcome burst of energy and dopamine. Maybe it’s the color. Maybe the flavor. But there’s just something about them…

Content Warning: mention of a blade

Ode to the Orange

There’s just something about you. 

When the world’s grey as  

the oatmeal I ate for breakfast this morning, 

and my stomach’s rumbling but I can’t stand the thought of  

a mere sandwich, 

again. 

In comes you. 

Sunshine, in the palm of my hand, 

a promise, that life isn’t all grey, 

not always. 

The blade bites deep into your skin 

and you send up an offering, in the sense of 

juice and the finest mist in this city. 

Better than mist on a boiling summer day, 

better, dare I say, than the spray and pour of a watermelon, 

this mist is like no other. 

Sunshine in my fingernails. Sunshine on my cheeks, 

in my teeth, nectar, straight from the maker himself 

spilling over my tongue. 

Down my throat, smooth as honey-laced tea. 

Energy, and life, in the palm of my hand, 

and in the perfect, bright, luminous flat peels you leave behind. 

The day isn’t so grey anymore.