light house

i am shaded but sill baking. salt thick in the air and thick on my lips,  for the heat i cant see the sun.towering ponderosa pines shifting and groaning on the breeze, making it twilight, with only thin slashes of light between the trunks.
needes scrach me. the sap sticks to my hands and hair, fir filling my nose, sticky bitter in my mouth.
go endlessly forward,stopped  under the branches, knot in my lower back and in my shoulders. my cheek and forearms sting.  watching my feet trudge through shed bones and hair of the trees.  craking and snapping under my feet,  toasted a Carmel brown on top, rotten to mold silver dust underneath after i kick it up.
getting stuck in my socks, pricking and iching. with sweat, on my temples, under my shirt, dripping. making  a curved path down my face and around my stomach and spine.

through the thicket last dusting of pine needles
a beach.
or rather a ledge.
  massive boulders shattered and warn to smaller stones showing red and orange, and painted green in the water below.here is openness here. wide cloudless sky, and flat fading desert. the lake is in a basin,  cut by rivers making it twisted and deep.
 a lake in a desert, being a relif after a Forrest.after brown trunks, brown needles and my own dirty brown hands, red  and blue are the colors.

 corporate red : towels, umbrellas, bikinis, all trying to blend with the red stone.
red sunburn bodies lain about. looks hot and shiny.pink. suntan lotion after miles of pine refreshes my nose.but i am a stranger here, so carefully no one sees me.

the lake is twisted, cut from rivers, making a deep bowl in the desert, bright blue against so much red and brown. with one island in the middle,with a light house, bright and hard line of white in so much red and blue.  

 down the slope, cat stepping around  people and carefully between towels, down to the water line. I take off my shoes and peel off my socks pine needles and mold fall out. musty clammy foot sweat. the wet breeze and open air makes my feet feel cold.  roll up my pants and wade in to the water. so clear and blue i can see the bottom it looks so shallow, like i could walk across the whole lake.

 pants tight around my calves, and feet cool in the water,the sky is a bowl framed in red earth. even when my eyes slide shut, i see red. sun giving me a head ache. water laps and talks.walking the beach