top of page

Contradictions of a City Backyard

  • Writer: Jane Nilson
    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.

 
 
 

2 Comments


Andy Solganik
Andy Solganik
May 27, 2020

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.

Like

Cris Harris
Cris Harris
May 21, 2020

Beautiful meditation on wildness, innocence and the city.

Like

Join our mailing list

Thanks for submitting!

  • Black Facebook Icon
  • Black Twitter Icon
  • Black Pinterest Icon
  • Black Flickr Icon
  • Black Instagram Icon
bottom of page