While We're Not Looking

An Apostle Islands postcard

Sometimes, just before I throttle up to head home down the West Channel after coffee at the Rock, I spin the Little Dipper for, I tell myself, one last look at the sunrise. But, in truth, there is something else I am hoping to catch.

Most mornings, while I drift sipping my coffee, the world sits in utter stillness, as formal as the subject of a portrait painter, holding its breath under the weight of my long gaze, waiting for me to leave.

Does the world stand still when we are looking, only to dance when we turn away?

And so, I spin the boat, pretending to crave one more look at sunrise but really half expecting to see the white pine atop Honeymoon Rock, that comma in the long poem of the morning, breaking into a jig, catching it, surprised and a bit embarassed, mid-step. “Surely you can’t imagine they don’t dance,” writes Mary Oliver in her poem Can You Imagine? “whenever we’re not looking.”

And so I look, turning quickly, expectantly. Yet, every time all is quiet, just a single branch, right at the tip, dipping and swaying as if an unseen bird had just taken flight.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).