By Adele Kenny '70
Distinguished Alumna of Kean University
(for Kean University)
The backstory seems incredibly short: a school that
framed our lives, and years fled by—the surprise of
that as if such days were meant to last—nothing gone
or done, as if we’d never have to say lost or over.
But life, of course, is not like that—time swings
forward in measured arcs. Landscapes and faces change.
Back then, we walked the little paths toward rooms in
Bruce and Willis that came to feel like home. It was
here that we dreamed a future feathered and winged.
Small, beneath a sky that had no edge or end,
we turned our faces to the light and walk here now
like shadows on a stream, ghosts inside a dream’s
dissolving wake—something of each of us always
here, our voices almost heard though all the scattered
distances we make. Remember, remember … all that
was given and what we took away: how it felt to be
that young, that unaware of what life is or where it
goes, to be that safe—here—where becoming begins.
Composed for the occasion of the 2014 Distinguished Alumni Awards
Copyright © 2014 by Adele Kenny. All rights reserved.