Jeannette Cooperman in The Common Reader:
In need of silence, I booked a room at a Trappist monastery. The following Friday, I snuck out of work early and headed south, not realizing that Ava, Missouri, was four hours away, down at the border of Arkansas. I sped down the interstate, glided off the exit ramp—and got stuck behind a livestock trailer. For the next hour, as we crept along a narrow country road, the wide face of a brown and white cow gazed back at me. Its fuzzy ears stuck straight out, like they had been glued on at the last minute. Lashes curled above steady brown eyes that held a lifetime’s observations.
There was no way to pass that trailer. I know because I kept trying, agitated, for the first three miles. The cow watched. Where it was heading, how idyllic or ominous its destination, I had no idea; nor did the cow know. Sighing, I downshifted, resigning myself to lost time. The cow held my gaze. The future fell away.
Slowly, a calm stole over me. By the time the road widened, I had no desire to go around. The placid look on that cow’s face—wordless, accepting—had righted my universe.
More here.