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Ode to Dogs

I am tired of hearing about dogs used as metaphors for the uncivilized. Imagine a world in which humans   possessed at least twenty times as many olfactory receptors, able…

I am tired of hearing about dogs

used as metaphors for the uncivilized.

Imagine a world in which humans

 

possessed at least twenty times

as many olfactory receptors,

able to distinguish the tang of cancer

 

rising musk-like from the bedsheets

next to a smoldering ash tray,

able to detect that one drop of blood

 

in every five quarts of water,

to know what you did last night

no matter how many times

 

you soap-scrubbed the evidence.

It does not take savagery

but more love than we can muster

 

to lick the hand you’ve sniffed,

to love despite the perfume of sins

we wear each day like a halo.

 

-Michael Meyerhofer (Delaware County)

first published in Mid-American Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, Fall 2006

 

Michael Meyerhofer

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of three books and five chapbooks and he currently teaches at Ball State University in Muncie. His poem, “Ode to Dogs,” won the 2006 James Wright Poetry Award and previously appeared in Mid-American Review.

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem from an Indiana poet every day in April (hand-selected by Indiana Poet Laureate George Kalamaras). Check in daily to see who is featured next!