Naked Man in my Back Yard
He looks at home in the warm weather among the flowers. Friends and I deck him out with ribbons at Midsummer to reign as the Summer Lord. He looks a little less happy in winter. He’s anatomically correct under the fig leaf, but tiny – it does get cold here.
He is a fountain – NO, not like that…there’s a fish near his foot that used to spout water. Kind of a boring fountain, and I have enough to do without maintaining a pond. So he just stands there. Given the fish, I think he’s supposed to be Poseidon or Neptune, though he has no trident. I could give him one, I guess. But as it is he serves for whatever deity is required.
He’s close to life-size. A wonderful garage-sale find! (The woman was moving and I got lots of neat stuff…) For a long time I found it slightly unnerving that he looks just like someone I used to know – not well, or in any kind of way particularly, just one of the regulars at the pagan fests. But I’d catch sight of the Naked Man and think What Is Whozit (can’t even remember his name) Doing in My Garden.
Just as well there are dense cedars planted along the side fence behind which there is a day-care now – wouldn’t want to traumatize the little ones.
12/18/2020 @ 5:11 pm
Your garden looks wild and beautiful. You must have lots of birds and butterflies. Naked man looks perfect there.
When I moved here the previous owners had gone with the manicured grass/trimmed yews/delineated beds full of red mulch look. I stopped all that.
The Cornell Ornithology labs has a free app that will take your yard data and recommend native plants and bird attracting berry producing shrubs of low maintenance. I did this and it took a few years, but now I get a who’s who of northeastern wildlife: rabbits, a woodchuck, crows, bats, tons of nesting birds. For about two weeks in August, the echinacea bed was packed with bright yellow fighting goldfinches, sometimes a dozen at a time. It looks messy and weedy though, my neighbor even mentioned it, but from a distance you can see birds flying over the abutting yards to land in mine. Messy and weedy gets the goods!
Myriad
12/20/2020 @ 2:49 pm
The front and back here was scrappy lawn when I moved in. First thing I did was smother lawn and plant flowers. Lots of hollyhocks that peer over the front fence at passersby (not that there’s many, this being a short street leading nowhere) and generally a jungle effect all summer. Grass now is just a walkway around the back garden except for my *circle*, which is (gasp) newly planted deliberate grass.
jpHart
12/20/2020 @ 5:13 am
euphonious hypnotic*********CSNY********got to find ourway back to garrrrrrrrrdennnnnn tranced your olmec man pecs lean as a boxer staid yet true american indians too lest we ever learn those cliffs of dover school marm paddles V2 shadows streak never spoke out of turn yet a summer wind joyous parade kite silence and sleep that flying dream steamboat whistle fist trapeze bar her forearm from rooks-rocks down below how long have you had this-wow-this yellow submarine she ventured** **not far four horses rustled froth hoofing whoosh ascendence lift off bright blurred semicircle mystic joy God’s fan horizon flash wide eye wild ends the night
12/20/2020 @ 10:58 am
jphart, I have been seeing your replies and trying to understand them. Were you at OS? If yes, I’m wondering what avatar you went by there. I haven’t really kept up here until recently so did not get the memo (no need to drop the veil if you’re not comfortable with that).
koshersalaami
12/20/2020 @ 8:54 am
Do you think you’ll ever run into Whozit again?
Myriad
12/20/2020 @ 2:13 pm
Not likely – tho for a while I was seeing all sorts of back-east people who were travelling out here or moved, some being people who never visited us back there. But nothing like a familiar face in strange territory, I guess.
For some reason it never occurred to me to contact Whozits about the Naked Man, perhaps because I don’t see him on FB among all the people from the pagan community back there. BUT…I do recall seeing his wife on FB. I shall look her up and send her a photo!
Myriad
12/21/2020 @ 2:00 pm
Okay – I just checked with a mutual friend back east. He says he passed on a photo to Rick, so he knows.
Myriad
12/20/2020 @ 2:15 pm
(now if I can just remember HER name…but we do have common friends I can consult)
jpHart
12/20/2020 @ 7:04 pm
@greenheron thanks for the attention. I remember you. I’d booked OS 9JAN09 with an adolescent image #43 on my football jersey. Had that usual Harry HI-LO experience of what to leave in what to leave out with a plethora of fiction—sequential—flash vignettes as well as concrete poetry, succinct haiku; I’d self-defined as a ‘failed short story writer’ and so often observed from the ‘back of the class’ with Roe, Catch-22, Walters, Trig, Scanner and Emmerling, Sands, Rita, Gamble, a/k/a, Joan Walsh et. al., that Night Crawler from Windsor and the countless thousands who must remain anonymous. So here we are. Hey greenheron, thanks for the heads up on cogency. I strive to avoid slap-dash and yeah, I probably ought think twice with my experimental repertoire but whined up with a box of rain. Sincerely, I hope it’s a good one. Curious if you hear from Mary Gravitt or Zanelle? RB^James or the Blueberry Poet
Arthur James? No doubt our demographic herewith is over the hill. But like I’ve pointed out to
Mr. Milner: time time time …