Poem for John Ashbery

              All that… what was it? I don’t know.
 Some dusty thoughts, the glimmer of decay
 enthralled by sudden sunlight, caught in play-
              ful, random, giddy dance, although
              the tendency is to a slow,
 indelible descent, to settle, gray,
 on everything, as each mote drags the day
              closer to closing. Let them go.
 
              Driving digits through grime,
 you scrawled a little drivel on the scrawl:
              details without detail.
              Your gift to famished time.
 I’d like to rivet that lubricious fall.
              Like you, I’d like to fail.

- Aaron Novick

About the author

Aaron Novick is an assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University. His poetry has appeared in Notre Dame Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Dunes Review, and elsewhere. He tweets as @AmneMachin