At the macro level, the title of the poem sets a reader to wonder: What sort of changes? Why "changes"? What is change? What's the end, the result, or outcome of mere change? The alleged topic of Ovid's poem seems to be more of the nature of a verb than of a noun. Some person, place or thing undergoes change, and becomes some other person, place or thing. The interest, the game, the poetry is usually in the act of changing -- the sudden arrest or surprise:
While she was still speaking, the soil covered her shins; roots, breaking from her toes, spread sideways, supporting a tall trunk; her bones strengthened, and in the midst of the remaining marrow, the blood became sap; her arms became long branches; her fingers, twigs; her skin, solid bark. And now the growing tree had drawn together over her ponderous belly, buried her breasts, and was beginning to encase her neck: she could not bear the wait, and she sank down against the wood, to meet it, and plunged her face into the bark. (Myrrha)
