Summary

The speaker recalls driving through Wyoming and seeing freshly tilled fields. The soil is dark in the afternoon sunlight. Thousands of cows stand comfortably in these fields, and the speaker stops the car to admire them. These cows strike the speaker as being completely at home in the world. In the poem's present, the speaker voices a wish to recover the contentment of that moment. Breathing the same air causes the speaker to feel connected to the cows. Studying them yields details such as their soft bellies and their udders filling with milk.

In the final two lines, the speaker understands the lack of separation between living beings. This knowledge generates contentment and presence.

Analysis

Malena Mörling’s poem “Standing on the Earth Among the Cows” concerns the interdependence between humans and the natural world. Though the poem brushes up against the genre...