Is This Your Dog?

Dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning without a hat or an umbrella, without any money or the keys to her dog house never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance— Thoreau in his curtainless hut with a single plate, a single spoon? Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world with nothing but her brown coat and her modest blue collar, following only her wet nose,

the twin portals of her steady breathing,

followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside

every morning

and eat all his food

what a model of self-containment she would be, what a paragon of earthly detachment. If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears, so acrobatic in her welcomes, if only I were not her god.

“Dharma” by Billy Collins, from Sailing Alone Around the Room. © Random House, 2002.

#Dogpoems