The Gym Ceiling

I know it intimately—
the glaring lights
in the performance room
that bear down on me
as I lie, breathless, heart racing,
after a fifty-yard sled push—
the sprinklers embedded
above the mats as I stretch,
and the silver fan blades
that look like helicopter propellers.
I roll the fascia on my back,
stare at the vents, and get lost
in their mesmerizing Hellenic design.
In the mind-body studio, I focus
on the skylight and breathe,
while sunlight infuses the flaming orange
stained glass flower mandala,
and white fans whir softly above me.
This is a landscape as familiar to me
as my own body, which is now
a bizarre combination of muscles
and wrinkled skin that looks
as though it rolled out of a giant shell
on some faraway beach.
The gym ceiling is my touchstone
in a personal universe whose planets
often careen into chaos, and threaten
to collide—or implode—in space.
The gym ceiling covers me
like a low-hanging, multifaceted sky,
a reminder to breathe,
just breathe.

Close-Up

When I get near enough,
I can see that each
of the dragonfly’s eyes
is like a polished turquoise
stone—an oversized gem
on a flamboyant bolo.
Below, spikes like fine brushes
oppose each other above a thorax
that fades from cloudy white
to the blue of a clear sky,
where lustrous shells are flanked
by armor plates of solid gold.
Its transparent wings, etched
carefully by a cosmic laser,
spread before me. I get close
enough to see the the fine threads
on its claw-like legs;
it does not move.
Instead, it stares at me
with thirty thousand lenses,
and I feel seen in a way
I do not fully understand,
but which makes my universe
expand just enough for me
to remain perfectly still,
in a transcendent place of knowing.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). She is also the author of three Origami Poems Project microchaps, and her poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana—just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans—also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large, and you can find her on X @WomenWhoServe.