Point of View

“Standing on the Earth Among the Cows” is told from the first-person perspective of a speaker looking back on a vivid and unforgettable experience. Certain memories remain more sharply ingrained due to heightened perceptions and their impacts on one’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and overall state of being. In the speaker’s case, standing in a field breathing in unison with thousands of cows is a window into the inherent interconnectedness of all life. The speaker states not feeling “separate from anything living” (14). This also has implications for how the speaker experiences time, which can be seen in the final lines when the speaker reveals, “I was / equally there and there was nothing to wait for” (14-15). Here, the speaker identifies as one of many instead of as an individual and isolated entity. This shows that the speaker is receptive to softening the boundaries distinguishing...