Billy Collins

This is a poem called Dharma.

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 doghouse, 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?

Gandhi, with his staff and his wire spectacles?

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.