The Roadside

The roadside is where the speaker and his companion(s) find the peaches after seeing the “signs” (5) directing them to the “bend in the road” (4), and represents the setting where they eat the peach and experience epiphanies about their own lives. The roadside also constitutes one of the points of the peach’s life cycle, moving from the “laden boughs” (6) – the trees on which they grow – to the “bins” (7) where they are chosen by customers. The seeming mundanity and inconsequentiality of the roadside – the fact that the speaker could have easily driven past it without noticing the peaches – heightens the value and the unlikeliness of this experience.

The "Inside"

Through the eating of the peaches, the speaker and his companion(s) feel like they are simultaneously ingesting “what we love” (11). The concrete fruits that they eat metamorphose into a sense of abundance and “jubilance” (16) within, as the...