Mandala by Joseph Polansky

Drop Dread  

Depression is a depletion of your emotional

Drive to direct your life.  Leaping into the bright

Life-vision that so inspired and motivated eager action

With splendid anticipation, you run into a wall.  

On black thoughts your mind is fed, 

Shivering your heart with ice-cold dread.

Darkness weighs too heavy not to fall.  To pray, 

Slumps your shoulders like a prayer shawl laden

With too many stones. “What's the use?” 

You hear yourself groan, as you see yourself losing

A foreclosing home.  Turning things around will begin

With looking at your mind, where you find nothing 

But how things seem, a sheer mind-dream in your head

Producing the fate you so gravely dread. Realizing this, 

The cause of woe you now know that you know

For those seeking freedom through external control

On and on and on must go

May you enter the light of release from that mere mirage-bound hold.