Beauty when things fall apart

A short poem I was re-reading last night that seemed to be so far from where I was going (and like it might never end up on my blog) seems much more applicable now:

Pre-Winter

Snow drives in angled bands
indistinguishable streaks
it is possible to follow a single flake
but only at the price of slight nausea from hyper-
focus and concentration

There is the innocence of winter
snow days -- benevolently profound interruptions in the hectic pace
of an adult world --
we all are pressed to some degree
to join the realm of responsibility
yet we still retain a giddiness whenever frozen precipitation
piles up on the roads and walkways
perhaps granting a respite --
one golden day of clarity --
removed from the muddled din of progress
which we all too blindly chase without question.

There is a darker side as well.
The death and stillness and cold nurture in some
a wish for the mind to mirror the starkness of landscape --
devoid of buffers --
a purity of experience unsullied by moral constraints
or considerations of responsibility;
brutal honesty, wind peeling layers of flesh.
Is such a state possible?
It is entirely possible that most would not understand
why one would desire that experience;
then again, I do not get why I should take every conventional medical
precaution currently known to short-sighted western scientists
in an attempt to prolong this
singular iteration of corporeal existence.

But the $125M man says "awareness of health above privacy"
so I submit my fluids,
quite recently tainted,
in the interest of health --
but in reality,
in all actuality,
in the interest solely
of my family's bottom line.