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John Oughton: a poem


Photograph by Brenda Clews


On Arabia Mountain


This cold sea of granite takes millennia to hoist a wave.

Like music with notes spaced a month apart or light so low on the spectrum it feels like sound.


Seen in light years or microns, the universe is equally infinite, galaxies

fleeing each other like ten trillion introverts at the world's biggest party. The lake only appears to refrain from changing.



John Oughton was born in Guelph, Ontario,. He completed a BA and MA in English at York U. and attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he was research assistant to Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. He has retired from the position of Professor of Learning and Teaching at Centennial College and has published a mystery novel, five books of poetry (most recently Time Slip from Guernica Editions in 2010), several chapbooks and over 400 articles, interviews, reviews and blogs. He is also a photographer.

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John Mowat Steven
John Mowat Steven
Nov 06, 2020

In response to John Oughton’s poem, 'On Arabia Mountain'

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So now

as my envy at your ways

has come obedient to rest

in peace I simply

admire your poem

and enjoy expansion

with rhythms of Creation

a pulse much greater even

than a mountain's

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