Interconnectedness and the Web of Life

In “Standing on the Earth Among the Cows,” an ordinary moment on a road trip anchors the speaker in a felt sense of the relationality between all living things. After noticing cows standing contentedly in a field, the speaker seeks stillness, silence, and kinship. Regardless of whether this is a revelation or a reminder of what the speaker already knows, it leaves a lasting if impermanent impression on the speaker.

After stopping the car to stand and breathe among the cows, the speaker taps into a feeling of interconnectedness. This can be seen particularly in the final lines of the poem in which the speaker shares, “I was not separate from anything living, I was / equally there and there was nothing to wait for” (14-15). The speaker understands that rather than existing as isolated entities, all organisms are part of a...