The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

I blaze with a deep sullen magic, smell lust like a heron on fire; all words I form into castles then storm them with soldiers of air. What I seek is not there for asking. My armies are fit and well trained. This poet will trust her battalions to fashion her words into blades. At dawn I shall ask them for beauty, for proof that their training went well. At night I shall beg their forgiveness as I cut their throats by the hill.

My navies advance through the language, destroyers ablaze in high seas. I soften the island for landings. With words, I enlist a dark army. My poems are my war with the world. I blaze with a deep southern magic. The bombardiers taxi at noon. There is screaming and grief in the mansions and the moon is a heron on fire.

Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but

softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly, as your spirit moves through me.

Presumin’ ain’t bein’.

felt a fraternal, neighborly connection to the arranged light above him.

Eventually she will die the way all old people in America die … from humiliation, incontinence, boredom, and neglect.

Her secret, we would discover, was that once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey.

Love has no weapons; it has no fists. Love does not bruise, nor does it draw blood.

learned from my mother that loyalty was the pretty face one wore when you based your whole life on a series of egregious lies.

If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will

never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.

thought that dreams were both the love letters and the hate mail of the subconscious.

want the worms to get at me as soon as possible. Let’s face it, that’s how they make their living, and I’ve never been against the way a man makes his living.”