PoemsLeo Connellan

Scott Huff

Think tonight of sixteen
year old Scott Huff of
Maine driving home fell asleep at
the wheel. His car sprang awake
from the weight of his foot head on
into a tree. God, if you need him
take him asking me to believe in
you because there are yellow buttercups,
salmon for my heart in the rivers,
fresh springs of ice cold water running away.
You can have all these back for Scott Huff.

By the Blue Sea

[c] 1989 by Leo Connellan
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.

She used to walk by
the house of the boy she
loved hoping he'd see her
and come out.

Slowly she walked by, love
a spike in her wind pipe. . . . dry
throat ache and pain all
she got for loving the boy
who took her by the blue sea

but would not come out
of his house and take her
inside to keep
.

Finally, she took a man who
had the same job the
father of the boy she
had wanted had and so there!"
But she didn't have him.

And her husband went

out every night, not with
women or drink but
out on a boar, a Dragger, out in
dark ocean.

He was a mean husband and
furious. He bent the prongs
of a fork to show his
evil strength to her if
she crossed him, like by
bearing a daughter.

She bore him five sons
in six years, five sons
and only wanted him to
come home to her evenings
from his fine job as good
as the job of the father of
the boy she loved and
couldn't have had.

But her husband didn't
see a woman telling him
how to live and went out
of Harbor, Maine on a
Dragger after Sardines,
Mackerel. . . .
.

His clothes always smelled
of gasoline and fish.

And with his perpetual
dead cigar he always
smelled from combination
cigar fish and gasoline like
the smell from first touch
of a match to fresh cigarette
making young children
car sick. . . . he
was something to crawl into bed with.

Well, all this time the
boy Fish Woman loved back
by the sea where Burdock
bushes stuck in his hair
like shot Porcupine quills,
boy she loved had failed
the pretentious pisspot aristocracy
expectations of his family
and those years from
time to time would stagger
in and out of countries and states
full of Molson of Canada of the
Ballantine of New York and
one evening in the dark
parking log of a Damariscotta
dance hall he staggered up to her
and still even then to her
he was still the one
of those lovely people she had
hoped to marry into and she
knew if he ever stepped
inside dance hall that night,

her husband, breaking ritual
and taking her dancing that night, hoping
to cure all this foolishness `bout
his being home with her nights, her
husband would lay his eyes on
the boy she really loved and
at last have him victim
for all her imagined coldness
to him, now her husband would
beat the boy she loved into
hospital or dead and
that night under the
singing leaves of lust in a
dance hall parking lot Fish
Woman protecting mother of
staggering boy of the blue pines.

There in the cold moonlight
thinking thoughts like how
he could get her again, he actually
stood there and asked her if
she'd still go with him even now
if he finally came to her.

He babbled he'd take
her five children too . . . her and
her five children. . . . She looked at
him sadly and smiled and said
she would, standing there knowing
he never would come for her but now
she knew it was because he was
a breathing dead man.

She never expected to
see him again where the
Pines came down there
ringing them in an
embrace of doom.

Well, she was a proud girl,
too alive to allow herself
to die in an empty house
where the man went
chugging out to sea nights.

Her beauty was English, the
Falcon nose, but
poverty showed in her set mouth.

And she had the guts
of women who stood
on Widow walks knowing
their men dead out through
the salt splashing fog.

And she left her sons
to save herself.

She tore herself from
her children to survive.

The way life was put to her
she has a right to if she
could do it. . . . leave her children. . . .
.

It was a hard thing to do
leave her sons, I do not
judge lest someone see
me for what I really am, see!

Fish Husband who had the
same job as the father of
the boy she loved whose
house she used to walk
slowly by, Fish Husband
could go out off
on the sea and that
was alright. . . .

But for her to want anything
the least of which was to
simply have him home with
her in the dreary house at night
was supposed to be more
than her right.

And it was the usual
sorrow back and forth

You cannot make children
with someone and leave
just like that!

Back and forth, she
tried it again with the
man who had the same
job as the father of the
boy she loved, but once
something is broken it
is destroyed. . . .
.

Finally, again, she married
(you have to eat), a man who
was so happy to have her he
bowed to everyone in church
as they got married.

And Fish Husband she left, no
sooner was she gone, took
another woman to wipe
noses, clean and
cook for a flock, who
didn't mind his saddling
up and tiding the
range of the sea, she had her
Charlie Pride records, who
soon presented him with
a little girl who completely took
over his heart, he was wild about
her, he, who had bent fork prongs and
shoving them under the nose of
Fish Woman Lurleen who used to
walk slowly in front of the
house of the boy she loved who
didn't come out to her. . . .

one day the boy she
loved all those years ago
came to see what he could
get or regret but her
second husband was fresh cold
and going with him wouldn’t
look right, besides love is
hatred when used or ignored

. . . . “I loved you once”
she told him now without feeling,
she told him from way deep inside like
there was a little her inside herself
calling from long ago. . . . “I loved you once.”

Calling “I loved you once” now
to him like retreating
surf of ocean spraying as
waves some in from way back deep.
Her face did not move
and it was a voice
of love that had died walking
past his house hoping he’d
come out, that said to
him now. . . . “no more, no more, but. . . . I loved you once,”

Now when he looked up at her,
she putting horror in
him, sinking feeling, she told
him he picked a day to
find her, her
second husband who bent
over at the middle so
glad he was to get her,
dropped dead and that
his coming now made her
feel that the sudden
massive coronary death
of her second husband must
be punishment for her

.