This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 15, 2011 - Despite the horrific things dogs ingest and their barking late into the night and early in the morning, many people love them more than people. Maybe it's because people are worse. This month's poem celebrates and explores man's best friend in the form of an ode.
Michael Meyerhofer
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 to distinguish the tan 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's most recent book of poems, "Damnatio Memoriae," won the Brick Road Poetry Prize. His previous books include "Blue Collar Elegies" (Steel Toe Books) and "Leaving Iowa" (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award). He lives in Indiana where he teaches poetry, collects medieval weapons, and stays up late writing politically charged letters to the editor. He will be reading at River Styx on Nov. 21.
To learn more about River Styx, click here. Richard Newman, River Styx editor for 15 years, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, "Borrowed Towns" and "Domestic Fugues." He also co-directs the River Styx at Duff's reading series.