Taming the Sadness

Sometimes a feeling
Of profound sadness
Will come over me,
And linger for a while
Seemingly without reason.
I will get to thinking
About the people I miss,
The ones I care about,
And the distance
That separates us.
Occasionally vivid images
Will come flooding back
Of places I have been,
Situations I encountered,
Or opportunities I missed.
I used to struggle with
Those melancholy feelings,
Imagining them
To be my enemy,
And the more I resisted them,
The more they persisted.
Then I noticed something
Rather interesting,
When I was writing,
The melancholy feelings
Tended to add
A certain romantic quality
To my words,
And I liked the effect.
Those feelings soon became
One of my most powerful tools,
A friend I could call on at will.