Free Verse
"Oranges" is written in free verse. While it's true that free verse is the poetic equivalent of anything goes, that doesn't mean you're free from considering form and meter in this one. (See what we did there?)
One of the things that free verse can do is help the poet capture the sound of regular speech. "Oranges" has the rhythm and feel of someone telling us a story. When your friend is telling you about his weekend adventures, does he usually speak in rhyme? Probably not. In this way, free verse mirrors everyday speech patterns and rhythms.
The poem's long stanzas and short lines also heighten the sense of regular speech and mirror the way we tell stories. The short lines give us the feeling of someone recollecting the past one fragment, one event, at a time. Memories often don't come to us all in one big chunk. You remember one detail and that reminds you of another and another until the next thing you know you have the whole story. That's kind of the way this poem is built. The speaker is remembering fragments and details of his walk that build up to tell the story.
The long stanzas make the poem feel very much in the moment, almost like stream of consciousness. Those long stanzas also mirror the way the speaker's mind is moving from one detail to the next without stopping to rephrase or revise his recollection. It makes the poem feel very honest and personal and it helps make all those fragments of memory feel connected.
Even in free verse poems, regular meter has a way of sneaking in. Take a look at line 6:
Beneath my steps, my breath
Hear that daDUM daDUM da DUM rhythm? Those little daDUM units are called iambs, which are syllable pairs of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
But why follow a strict metrical pattern in one line and not in others? Good question. In this case, the poet is likely using the iambs to mirror the line's content. The line is talking about walking and breathing on a cold day. The iambs mirror that rhythm of walking and breathing—kind of neat, right?
Okay, that does it for form and meter, gang. You're free to go. (Last free verse joke—we promise.)