Lines 1-7 Summary

Lines 1-4

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.

• Okay this one starts out nice and clear. Good—we like clarity.
• We have a speaker remembering his first walk with a girl. It was cold and he was carrying oranges—weird, but clear. At least the title makes more sense now.
• But wait… we're detecting some crafty, poem-y stuff going on behind all that clarity.
• Check out the end of lines 1 and 3. Notice anything? Here's a hint: enjambment. (Yeah, when we said "hint," we meant "answer." See how nice we are? You owe us one.)
• Notice the way the lines end but the phrase carries over the line break and into the next line? It's kind of the poetic equivalent of an uncontrolled intersection with phrases just rolling through.
• When lines come to a nice full stop, or at least a clear pause, they are called end-stopped lines. These lines have clear stop signs, or at least a yield sign, at the end—a period, a comma, something to slow you down.
• Sometimes enjambed lines don't make any sense without the rest of the phrase in the following line. Other times, enjambment can have an interesting effect on how lines are read and understood. 
• In the case of line 1 ("The first time I walked"), the enjambment makes us consider for a moment the idea of someone's first steps—like a baby learning to walk. This reinforces the idea of the walk with this girl being a kind of milestone for the speaker. If "with a girl" was on the same line, we probably would never consider this reading. Kind of cool, right? 
• The enjambment in line 3 works the same way. For a moment, before we get to line 4, we feel like "weighted down" refers to the speaker's feeling or attitude. Then our eyes drop down to the next line and we understand that he is weighted down with, well, oranges.

Lines 5-7

December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,

• These three lines set the scene. We got the sense that this wasn't a warm weather walk from "Cold" at the beginning of line 3. But now, there's "frost cracking" on the ground and the speaker can see his breath puffing out in front of him. We're picturing full-on mitten weather, now. 
• Um… gloves—we meant to say gloves. We would never wear something as childish and warm and cozy as mittens. Trust us.
• The description of the "frost cracking" as the speaker walks along is a nice sensory detail (sensory as in sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) that allows us to hear as well as see what's going on in the scene. Soto really wants to place the reader in the scene so that we can experience what the speaker is describing.
• One note about form here: there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or rhythm going on. We'll have lots more to say about that over in "Form and Meter."
• At this point, you might be feeling a little ripped off and rightly so. This poem's title, "Oranges," puts us in the mood for something warm and summery and sweet—but we don't have that yet… or do we? Read on Shmoopers, read on.