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Trans formation / Feathers / Train Travel

Transformation / Feathers/ Train Travel Meadow sun on your shoulders erases shadow from behind the lens I open the shutter. In the photo, your hand is a wing, feathers erupting from yourfingers. You squint and smile, my hunk, mybeauty. The gorgeous Hulk's green skin split reliablyopen his clothes eachweek when the doctor he was got angry, on TV. We both loved the moment, LouFerrigno in rags, entering the scene, you prone on the shag grass of our carpet, the kid, me the mom with a plate of warm brownies we expect to eat. Now, twentyyears later, on a train, scanning yourpicture, I recreate your "marvelous transformation, not a particularly pleasant process for the subject," said Nabokov to his students. I'm one, and still your mom as I travel upstate trying to reviewyour change as the train sings to thewaterfowl landing and rising in the wetlands we observeas backdrop,my thoughts 35 mired in "the tickle and urge... to shed that tight dry skin, or die." Nothing here is metaphor. At the station you'll appear as the guyI caught on film, his fist filled with feathers. In last night's dream you were my daughter still an infant in arms, wrapped in a sheet over a diaper, the onlyone I had. "Relax," I said as we ascended the ramp steep with cars or foot traffic around an invisible bend. You tucked your small babybodyclose. Wind howled. "We're two strong women," you said, baby mouth damp with my milk. Of course I looked around for someone to tell, my prodigy, as we crossed the bridge safely and came again to the library, or a bus, or the New York subwaywhere we'll ride, mother and son, home to breakfast. In my dream where everything's metaphor you're new, my new girl, and I'm studying at a library table. Hours pass, a blank space called flow, or I'm blank. The new guy comes to take the desk, he's blank, slow, his truck collection, metal miniatures reduced to two he clunks on the oak to show me. Rushing to leave, I lose my purse, my keys, my coat. And now we're two, infant daughter and mom chatting up friends I don't recognize, one with a collection of clinkyjewelry she pulls from a lightweight purse suitable for travel, another an expert on natural childbirth. Lucky you're nursing, but baby, it's cold 36 outside and you'rewet. The busman takes us on wherever we're going and although this stop is unfamiliar,I see the highwaybeyond and across it, my office. And on and on. "Though wonderful to watch, transformation from larva to pupa or from pupa to butterfly is not a particularlypleasant process for the subject involved ... he must shed that tight skin, or die. Asyou have guessed, under that skin, thearmor ofa pupa and how uncomfortableto wear one's skin over one's armor - isalready forming." "You have noticed," Nabokovgoes on, "that the caterpillar is a he,the pupa an it, and the butterfly a she." The great man is winding down. The train is slowing. And stops. And now we're here. Of course the iron gates open onyou. 37 ...