Always Nearing Home

Homage to Jack Kerouac Jack, I cannot claim to know you. That's the simple truth, and would it were otherwise is my current lament. You were born a half generation ahead of me. Your journeys were ending just as mine were about to begin in earnest. What your journeys discovered and passed on I will let historians of the adventurers of the Beat Generation relate. What you achieved in literature those deeply moved by your novels and poems can best proclaim. I will listen and learn from them: they carry your spirit in their lives and impart it to the world. One of them, who calls himself The Roncesvalles Poet, a Frenchman like yourself in background, Richard Wlodarski, keeps your being fresh and living. He embodies your service to The Open Road, your commitment to truth-telling, your quest for a golden scripture that will light our ways. Jack, we see this clearly now, forty-nine years since you lived among us, you were the modern Odysseus: again and again you launched on new voyages, always nearing home you kept venturing outward, seeking new spaces those coming after you could occupy, new homelands left in the wake of your voyaging. We sense you still, out there, summoning us to match your adventure to seek a Golden Eternity.