Beyond Pain, 300 B.C. Poem
A coarse rope,
black night thoughts,
painfully
bind me
to you.
bind me
to you.
-
It is the black ‘Loch an Duin’,
from which a Big Dark Bud rises.
Red lily’s petals and glossy orange stamens
open,
to reveal
an intoxicating nectar pool.
-
And I, drunk, paralysed 'Tollund' man,
within this glossy holographic dream,
drown in the bog,
which is
your Sacred Nectar Heart.
-
This flower is closed.
This flower is closed.
Lakshmi image from http://www.vishvaupa.com/
The Water Lily is 'James Brydon'
After I’d written this poem I found this relevant information on ‘Girl Scientist’s 360 Yahoo blog:
It has to do with sex. Now most people know that bugs normally fly from flower to flower, getting pollen all over their body while gathering nectar to eat. Landing on a different flower, the flower hopes that some of the pollen will come off and stick to the stigma (female part of the flower). That way a pollen tube can form and fertilize the eggs.
The water lily has put a little twist on things. The first day it opens, it lacks pollen. Instead the structures that carry the pollen (stamens) are smooth and slippery and surround a clear pool of poisonous nectar. The bug, after visiting an older water lily with pollen, sees a pool of what it thinks to be nectar and lands in the centre.
It struggles but cannot fly out, because it is wet and the poison is affecting it. It cannot crawl out because of those incredibly smooth pollen less stamens. It dies.
The pollen from its body floats about in the pool of poison and when the flower closes for the night the pool drains, carrying the pollen to the stigma. The next day, when flower opens the stamens are covered in pollen ready for a new bug to carry it in a fatal journey to another day old lily.
For more fun with plant sex, ‘Girl Scientist’, from whom I got this information, highly recommends the video ‘Sexual encounters of the floral kind’.
It has to do with sex. Now most people know that bugs normally fly from flower to flower, getting pollen all over their body while gathering nectar to eat. Landing on a different flower, the flower hopes that some of the pollen will come off and stick to the stigma (female part of the flower). That way a pollen tube can form and fertilize the eggs.
The water lily has put a little twist on things. The first day it opens, it lacks pollen. Instead the structures that carry the pollen (stamens) are smooth and slippery and surround a clear pool of poisonous nectar. The bug, after visiting an older water lily with pollen, sees a pool of what it thinks to be nectar and lands in the centre.
It struggles but cannot fly out, because it is wet and the poison is affecting it. It cannot crawl out because of those incredibly smooth pollen less stamens. It dies.
The pollen from its body floats about in the pool of poison and when the flower closes for the night the pool drains, carrying the pollen to the stigma. The next day, when flower opens the stamens are covered in pollen ready for a new bug to carry it in a fatal journey to another day old lily.
For more fun with plant sex, ‘Girl Scientist’, from whom I got this information, highly recommends the video ‘Sexual encounters of the floral kind’.
Labels: lily, Loch an Duin, Tollund
posted by johnthebarman at 1:47 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home