Big Poppy Sex Quotes

OK. So we have a very obviously female flower, here, and while the bee doesn't get gendered until line 8, the very mention of the word "bee" in a nature poem conjures up thoughts of "the birds and the bees," that classic euphemism for sex. Not to mention the fact that the bee's action is kind of suggestive, laden as it is with notions of entering, intoxication, and the like. Obviously the bee can't actually have sex with the flower, but it is about to make it possible for the flower to reproduce by pollinating it.

A couple of subtly sexy things here – first of all, the description of the petal itself is pretty suggestive. "A royal carpet"? "Down-hung, shrivel-edged"? We're thinking female private parts here. So things are getting a little steamier, though they're still kind of subtle. What's less subtle about this passage is the "first-about-to-fall" part, especially if you think of it in terms of sex being, to some, a kind of sin. Thus, the loss of virginity ("first") is paired up with "fall," which alludes in this way to the Fall of Man (you know, that bit in the Bible where Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and God kicks them out of Eden).

This is the act itself, ladies and gentlemen. In what can really only be read as a blatant reference to copulation. Phew! We're fanning ourselves again. Interestingly, the poppy's role in this whole act is incredibly passive – while she is swaying, it's due to the wind or the motion of the bee – the poppy, as much as this poem makes her a woman, is still a plant and can do nothing of her own volition. So she literally cannot help but embrace the bee.