Bruce Campbell

Dogs May Smell God

Bruce Campbell

I think dogs meditate – when you see them lying quiet, alert and attentive to every breeze, every sound –I’d add, if I could, the cast of light, but that’s more in our diet –to every sense, anyway, that they’re best evolved to use –attending to what’s concrete, most in this moment. And I think that’s where God’s still big news, right on the edge of this here right now –if anywhere, here the Tao’s most touchable. If there were and could be no other bestowment, what better than a heartfelt sense of “Wow!”? If God infuses everything, here’s where the infusion bubbles –where creation happens, where new is found.

I think dogs may smell God –that being their primary sense, it stands to reason, though it will shock some that I say so and seem to others only odd. I say this ’cause my dog seems more at peace than, on my best days, I do. And I say this because God’s there to be seen if not by us much smelt. I say this because I’m keen to know, if unsure the way to pursue, whatever it is my dog’s just felt and where, while lying still, she’s been.

[This poem was first published in the Summer 2021 issue of The Missouri Review]

Bruce Campbell

This is how I see us: God below, human above –spider above, rhino above. Fly, antelope, polar bear, trout, tiger, mantis, lemur, platypus, pterodactyl, trilobite, mosasaur, albatross also above. Individual consciousnesses down so far. Below that, tapping into – being, actually –unavoidably and irrevocably, irreversibly and unrefutably, the one consciousness we all are basically. Separate, singular, private, and seemingly complete, but only so so far.

And permeable.

[This poem was first published in the Summer 2021 issue of The Missouri Review]

Bruce Campbell is, by day, Scientific Editor at the Magee-Women’s Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. In the evenings, he is a sometimes composer of microtonal music.