Small as a Figure in a Hudson River School Painting
When we moved across country
I hummed Natalie’s lyrics,
Go West, paradise is there.
It had taken all day to get through Texas
with its miles of tornado friendly flatlands
yielding nothing but tumbleweeds.
I’d never driven through mountains
but saw the Capitan towering in the distance,
sentry to painted deserts folded between
cliffs of dried seas like unanswered questions.
My senses vying for attention,
I turn down the radio so I can see.
Horizons of pumpjacks replaced by saguaro cactus,
cicadas surrender to desert crickets, Sonoran toads.
I imagine graffitied trains heading east
carrying messages home.
Funny how longing works, lingering on.
Somewhere between Albuquerque and the Mohave
I hold a whiptail lizard in the palm of my hand.
I know what it is to feel so small,
small as a figure in a Hudson River School painting,
colors hanging overhead like banners of papel picado,
and the night sky with its half-moon,
like the black belly of a whale,
his sleepy half-closed eye,
questioning my existence.
This poem was previously published in Door is a Jar Magazine, and is from the chapbook The Winged and the Horned by Tammy C. Greenwood (Finishing Line Press) at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-winged-and-the-horned-by-tammy-c-greenwood/
Poet and Printmaker, Tammy C. Greenwood is a Louisiana native residing in California. Currently an MFA student in Poetry at San Diego State University, she is a Pushcart Prize and Best Spiritual Lit nominee, and her work appears in Greensboro Review, Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, McNeese Review, Whale Road Review, West Trade Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, The Winged and the Horned, will be published in 2026 by Finishing Line Press. You can find more of her work at www.tammygreenwoodart.com and her Instagram @tgreenwoodart
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