Rebecca Kenneally, singer and conductor, is Chair of the Performing Arts Department and Choral Director at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, and director of the Old North Church Youth Choirs Director in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Kenneally conducts the choirs at Music at Port Milford Chamber Music Festival in Ontario, Canada, where she is also a faculty soprano soloist. She sings regularly in recitals and has many theater directing credits. Kenneally holds degrees in voice and conducting from Northwestern University and The New England Conservatory of Music.

I Forget

Rebecca Kenneally

I can remember summer

The feeling of sun boring its heat

into my bones

Sand heating me from below

Wind and surf crashing

over voices and planes and gulls

I can remember winter

Unable to warm my toes

under socks and blankets.

With blackened chunks of snow

lumping off my car’s wheel well.

Or even silent, glistening snow on bare limbs at first light.

I can even remember fall

crunching in piles of auburn and gold

Changing air and crisp sounds of cheering fans

laughing children,

and the woods as leaves leave branches in whirling gusts.

But spring?

Spring is a surprise.

Thirty-nine springs and I still forget.

The open smell of sweet air.

The yellow green of maples starting over

and the insanity of birds waking the day.

I forget.

And when faced with the miracle, I remember, and am reborn.

— Rebecca Kenneally

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