Traveler's Regret

Traveler's regrets He had been a sailor all his life, a traveler trying to find the boy he left behind in the haste of becoming an adult. An autumnal leaf falls into a stream, follows its course but sometimes, there is a tiny inlet where the leaf gets stuck with other debris before getting loose again and drifting where the stream meets, a river that ends in the sea, becomes a mud bank full of nutrient-attracting red snappers. Often, he senses the pain the world suffers at the pain of the futility of life, to stop for a moment contemplating He thinks the boy will know, he has lived long enough to not chase rainbows, a fleur-de-lys is but pretty and disappears from view in a dreamy haze Perhaps it was the voyage that mattered, not how it ends