This day could be any day many millions of years past, hopefully many millions of years to come. Wild turkey, redwing blackbird, goldfinch, fiddler crab, starling, grackle, willet, canada goose, herring gull, great blue heron, great egret, mama fox and her kit, yellow jacket, annoying fly, biting mosquito and tick, trumpeter swan, tree swallow, turkey vulture, snapping turtle, cattle egret, mallard. Generation after generation they have survived and thrived in their diversity, each of them wholly dependent on whatever nature provides each day. I admire these creatures who live so precariously, so trustingly, but I thank God for my roof, bed, easy chair, refrigerator, stove, microwave, computer, television, automobile, and phone. On my shelves, hundreds of books. Am I unnatural?
Photo Prayer 2026-11. Photo of a trumpeter swan at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, April 27, 2026. Trumpeter swans are the heaviest living bird native to North America. Photo Prayer 2026-12; photo and text copyright 2026 by Danny Nelson Schweers.
COMMENTS
Walter B. wrote:
Even your questioning makes you true to your kind. Therefore, natural.
Mike C. wrote:
Amen! Thank you Danny.
Anne G. wrote:
Your list of human creature comforts sounds normal to me. Did you omit “camera” intentionally? Love Bombay Hook. Who knows, we may run into each other there.
Alice V. E. wrote:
Nope, not unnatural! I’d add clean water.
Bernadette D. wrote:
I LOVE THIS! Poetic again!
Louis H. wrote:
Thanks Danny. Do you go boating in Bombay Hook? [DANNY WROTE: No, never seen anyone boating there with sail, motor, or paddle.]
Kathy B. wrote:
Beautiful Danny!
Bob Cox wrote:
Nice photo and prayer, Danny! Here’s a response. Feel free to post it.
One Creation
I stand at the pond’s edge.
A trumpeter swan drifts across its surface
with the kind of calm that makes a person
aware of unnecessary furniture.
This day,
could be borrowed from a million years ago,
or slipped forward, unopened,
into a future where wings still write
their cursive signatures across the sky.
There they are,
Your parishioners without pews:
a wild turkey scratching its sermon into the dirt,
a blackbird flashing its epaulets
like a minor prophet,
a goldfinch stitching yellow light into the air,
a fiddler crab waving its single oversized claw
as if hailing a passing miracle.
Even the less beloved congregation,
the yellowjacket with its quick temper,
the housefly rehearsing annoyance,
the mosquito and the tick,
tiny reminders that not all psalms are pleasant,
they, too, take what the day hands them
and ask for nothing more.
While I count my blessings
like a shopkeeper at closing:
roof, bed, easy chair,
the obedient hum of appliances,
the glowing catechism of screens,
the faithful automobile waiting for my key,
my phone, the oracle of distraction.
And the books,
hundreds of them,
spines aligned like a well-behaved choir,
each one promising a world
that does not require me to step outside.
So here is my prayer:
Am I Your unique creation, Lord,
to sit so comfortably
while the heron stands in cold water,
while the goose navigates an invisible map,
while the turtle carries ancient patience
through mud and time?
Or am I simply another creature
of a different habitat,
one lined with drywall and Wi-Fi,
one that trusts not the marsh or tide
but the quiet click of a thermostat?
Teach me, if You will,
to live somewhere
between the swan’s reflection
and my own in the darkened screen,
to hold gratitude for interdependence,
to feel the thin thread that ties my breath
to theirs.
If I cannot surrender my chair,
or silence my machines,
at least let me look up now and then,
long enough to see the swan glide past
as if it knows something
I have spent my whole life
trying not to need.
Bob Cox
1 May 2026
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