the shock of self-recognition was such that never in 15 years was I able to reread weinberger’s story about the woman who turned herself into a flowering tree. (woman into tree, a willing daphne, i suppose that would be me.) the unspoken other half is: that, likewise caught mid-transformation, neither woman nor tree now, and those flower-like years shadowy memories after the wild savagery of rainstorm, (those years! chary of passion, blossoming with abandon both literary and sexual — one no longer told them apart — those flower-like years)

(but one can still recognise something of the flowering tree in her, or was it the woman?)