​Pandora's Collective Poetry Contest (2018)
2nd Place Winner

CITY LIVING

You’ll go, some night,
to the highest point you can find
with a view of water.
It’s here you’ll stand
to watch the curve of your city
as it grasps and holds the bay.
​
It’s here at this window you can imagine
what you’ll never see: this land
in another time. Before coal and cars,
plate glass, fine dining, and all our rush
and bustle, there was the rocky shore
and the moon. The owl’s stoop to kill.
And now and again,
the sudden heaving breath
of a whale.
​
- by Genevieve MacKay