Contradictions of a City Backyard
- Jane Nilson
- May 19, 2020
- 2 min read
The only rocks of any appreciable size
are the ones that were brought here.
They used to be collected in a pile from Linden, from beaches,
from the nearby Metroparks on a rare venture outside.
I used to have a pile. I always moved the marble from Impett Park - my red-streaked, dirt-caked crowning glory - to the top, for no reason other than it was as things should be.
The rock pile has long since been buried
by the thick new growth
of our meager variety of flora. I have no dominion there.
The fringes have gone rogue, wild as far as they can;
The weeds, ivy, trees cut off by interlocking wire.
Over the thin, green-vined fences, at least the houses look different. This neighborhood happened organically, as did the division of organic matter.
City is a relative term. My backyard is no less Cleveland than downtown,
but you could almost forget the urban-suburban divide
from the appearance of my street. Almost being the operative word;
the patchwork-paved road and shocking
BUMP
at the end of the driveway
could only be the product of a municipal government
with more pressing issues.

The room-sized sector of shaded grass between the fences is
more city than Fairview Park over the bridge,
less city than the potholes on the way to the bus stop.
My backyard is more urban at night,
as the lights from the cop bars reflect off the looming bowl
of Ohio sky, turning it greyish-purplish-brown;
the same bars keep whole blocks - mine included -
uncomfortably awake
in the unlikely event of a Cleveland sports victory.
I am torn between a stubborn conviction
that it is best to be at the center of things, municipally speaking,
and a primal desire
to get lost, or at least be able to.
I remember the patch of trees at Impett
which now seems thin
as it was in second grade, when
Channin and I found a body? what turned out to be
a long blue tarp, half-buried, still mysterious a decade on.
My friend Bridget, six blocks over, had a backyard
at the edge of the tumble-down toward the Rocky River.
We would run to the edge of the ravine
and discuss the perceived irretrievability
of the decision to climb down.
Bridget's neat backyard was in Cleveland, at the edge of
truly massive woods. But I had been there a thousand times
before I understood the magnitude of the crumbling downward slope behind her house.
By then, it had lost its mysterious charm; I could comprehend that
the trees behind her house were the
trees on the hill visible from the bottom of the valley were the
trees across the valley from Stinchcomb Park.
Bridget moved west, then doubly east, to places
with no sudden ravines or Irish bars.
Impett, however, maintained its spell of incomprehension for years;
the once-explored trees were untouched
and, therefore, stretched unimaginably in three directions,
bounded only by the edge of the baseball diamond.
There was a place to get lost in; I knew it was there
in case of emergency, in case of a sudden necessity for a tabula rasa.
The spell, of course, was broken
with the realization that the Impett trees
were in a manageably small grid of 30 or so feet in each direction,
but my eight-year-old self doesn't need to know that.
She has a good six years left of believing in a place
to get lost
and stay east of the western border.
Well done! This is such a cool idea and you set it up beautifully. Idk if the way you set up the lines was intentional, but it adds a really cool effect to the piece.
Beautiful meditation on wildness, innocence and the city.