The Lake That Is Fed With A Burning River

I drag deep on my cigarette.  The slow smoldering flame burns closer to my lips beginning to burn the letters in black on white paper that read Turkish Royal.  The smoke filters out of my lungs, caught on the breeze like the wings of a bird.  To the West, dimly lit by the glow of a hundred candles in paper bags I see the creek pouring into the lake, the tall lonesome tree with roots sunk in sand, and the pier that the bags sit upon so precariously perched.  A memorial.  A reminder.  A swan song. A threnody.  To the East jutting out from the shore is a city, a string of lights, like a pearl necklace on this dingy bemoaned shore.  A handful of buildings reach to the sky, kept company by pillars of smoke from factory stackhouses. As I take another pull I look upwards, as a lonely cloud strolls across the sky, in a friendly game of tag with the stars that have come out early to play. I exhale slowly and flick my cigarette into the waves.  I quickly strip down, and within a few seconds I'm amongst the waves, swallowed up by the lake that is fed with a burning river.