H. writes to his muses to understand the death of the Novelist D.F.W.

"I am ambivalent about the gringo's attempt to convert me to his god."
--Guadalupe Carrillo Trujillo

Those of us who survive dream of the forest,
thick stands of Western white pine, sometimes
the deciduous woods of Pennsylvania,
black cherry and white birch. One time I even went
apple picking, only to drop into sleep to dream
an even deeper dream, a scene containing all the bright eyed
muses I've known, those visions I've counted on:
there's nothing I like better than falling
asleep under the constant hum of late summer crickets
with my lover, holding her tender body against the light.
Who told you that non-existence is holiness? I can
almost hear the final fury of fall, the balding
grass, the resigned and dying spiders rebuilding
their webs after the unrelenting wind,
the unused day-lillies swaying later in the day.
And sometimes it is her body I imagine
under apple boughs. I am suddenly and irreversibly
drawn to her song, I am pulled to her heart
and it is upon her heaving breastbone I make my mark,
my tongue wild with harkening desire.