Melancholia Matters

Perhaps, in

Extolling struggle

Pain

Tears shed

In battle, or

An awful yet

Never, never, never futility

The melancholy

No less an emotion

One more present

And each, a tool

Our feelings the fuel

The deeper cells and shapes of things

That form and thicken into thoughts

While I would like to

Lie

And say a laugh

Or smile strikes more present

Than the soft

Lingering flicker of

The back of my throat

Nothing offers more grace

Or care than to

Know

Yes, to

Without doubt feel

Seeing the sorrow

To act while trapped

The lifeguard half-drowned

While cutting the sea

And as we will be

Cresting and coughing and free

Up and down, high or low

There is no evading

You think a doom?

I suggest

Never anything else

But the chance to pad

The sea and reach out your hand

For those beside you

And sadness

Perhaps especially in the dark

Then as much as ever what we do

Becomes life’s possibility in fact.

By J.W.H. Hobbs.