A Traveller's Regret Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The traveller's regrets

He has been a sailor all his life, a traveller trying to find
the boy he left behind, the haste to become an adult
an Autumnal leaf falls into the stream follow its course
but sometimes, there is a tiny inlet where it gets stuck
with other debris before getting loose again and drifting
to where the stream meets a river that ends in the sea
where mighty rivers add nothing but mudbanks that
are full of nutrients and attract edible snappers.
Often, he senses the world ache of the futility of life
to stop for a little while for inaudible contemplation
not to hunger for what he cannot acquire, the ease
of a life well lived.
He thinks the boy will know, who has lived long enough
not to chase rainbows, a fleur-de-lys is but pretty and
disappears from view in a dreamy haze.
Perhaps it was the voyage that mattered and not how
it ends.