At dawn, a brief shower, but humidity still clings. John Ashbery is dead, a generation of poets sinking with him as the pungent odor of wet earth rises.     One way to read his poetry, Mr. Ashbery suggested in a 1991     interview, was to think of it as music. "Words in proximity to     one another take on another meaning." Winding down from the ridge, a runner passes me. Short, tanned muscular legs, music seeping from headphones, she passed me me months ago at a higher elevation. If I cannot recalI names, I can imagine visionaries and dreamers as swirling inseparable, interconnected energy patterns which could be called powerscapes. It is in these various numinous worlds that con- sciousness is questioning the reality of myself.