Wildflower

A wildflower blooms in the cracks of this city street. It stirs a kind of longing inside my chest, a reminder of open fields, when everything was free.

How the sun shone on my youthful face, one with nature, one with the wind, now I wander these walls of concrete and steel, feeling the pulse of the earth still beating, still alive beneath, even here, in the hardest of places.

Let it go, I say, let the city crumble, let the roads return to The Wild, let the flowers reclaim their space.

• Jack Kerouac

• Jack Kerouac