Poem a Day #4

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave —
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

There was this boy I fancied who was impervious to the seductive power of poetry. But where TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi failed, a shared swottiness and a fondness for pints of lager succeeded. In short, reader, I married him.

‘The Orange’ was a reading at our wedding. With typical lightness of touch, Wendy Cope turns an unusually large citrus fruit into a meditation on life. This poem delights because it partners the banal — lunchtime, lists and people called Dave— with the sublime: peace, love and being alive. It gives us a sense, also, that things haven’t always been this easy:

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

We’re offered happy but ordinary moments, strung together like an off-hand exchange, until those last two lines.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

And there’s the beauty of the poem. As she did with the orange, the poet shares her bounty with us: that zesty, joyous, fleeting thing otherwise known as hope.