Nature
Nature not only functions as the poem's setting, but as a source of metaphor and symbolism. The image of a bee pollinating a flower, dramatized as a metaphor for an erotic relationship, expresses a similarity between the natural world's unaffected sexuality and empty, heated human affairs. By looking at nature, Hughes also sees mankind: people are only so different from the wild, unruly world around them.
Sexuality
The interaction between the bee and the poppy works as a metaphor for a fleeting affair between two people overcome by desire and desperation, whose sole interest is erotic satisfaction. A powerful sexual charge characterizes the poem's tone, language, and action. The speaker's diction repeatedly emphasizes the "heat" of the moment, first in the poppy's "hot-eye," then the bee's "sizzling bleats," and then throughout his description of the poppy's petals. The absence of affection imbues their affair with a certain emptiness; the "difficult" and "helpless" nature of their relationship strips the action of tenderness and meaning. What happens between the bee and the poppy is raw and unsentimental.
Time
The poem begins with an exclamation of the poppy flower's appeal and stature, but we learn in line 3 that she "sways toward August," meaning her beauty is quickly approaching its expiration date. Even as the bee and the poppy "Embrace...helplessly," the poppy is "already" growing closer to the moment when her petals will shed completely. The emphasis on transience—the fleetingness of both the poppy's allure and affair with the bee—also appears in lines 21-26. At the end, the poem moves into the future tense, as the speaker anticipates the poppy's remembrance before the affair has reached its conclusion, and before her first petal has fallen.
Gender
Gender plays a significant role in "Big Poppy." The poppy and the bee are characterized largely by their status as female and male, respectively. The speaker describes the bee as driven blindly by attraction and lust, while the poppy is passive, alluring, and desirous. While the bee is characterized using active verbs like "clambering," the poppy is described using rich figurative language that paints her as passive, "helpless," yet inviting. She is only a "queen" for as long as she retains her beauty. The bumble bee, the male figure, is powerless to the poppy's charms; at the same time, he retains a degree of power over the poppy, because his value and his identity are not influenced by his appearance.
Death
When we learn in line 3 that the poppy "sways towards August," we know that the theme of death underlies the poem's tone. The poppy's "helpless" embrace expresses her awareness of her quickly fading appeal, while the speaker's detailed description of the poppy's fate in lines 12-20 brings an image of the poppy's demise to the center of the action. The poppy's impending death is another motivating factor in the raw, desperate sexuality that drives the poem.
