A Dog on His Master by Billy Collins
Who can resist Billy Collins, two-time Poet Laureate of the United States, making his ordinary lyric poems out of breakfast in restaurants, and out of evenings with a bottle of wine, in the little uncomfortable moments between spouses, from observations around childhood. There is something so pleasant about the poems of Billy Collins, the everyday things dusted ever-so-lightly and turned into art.
A Dog on His Master
As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.
Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.
And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.
–Billy Collins
Harbors of Heaven 