Dragonfly with swirls on the upper back

The dragonflies came off the mere again this morning, so many that the lane looked like it was full of threaded glass. Mother says they are only hunting midges and I should stop standing in the reeds with my mouth open. I told her I am not catching anything, I am watching. Their wings are the colour of the inside of a mussel shell, lilac at the edges and pink where the sun gets through, and when they turn you can see the veins like the lines on Father's old map of the fens.

Mrs Pell at the post office says the packet boat no longer calls at Saltern Staithe, so I have been walking your letters to the carrier at Wrayford myself. She asked after you the way people ask after a stone they have dropped down a well. I did not tell her about the bottle you left under the bridge in March, with the scrap of paper saying you would be home before the swallows. The swallows came back. I counted eleven on the wire by the church.

Last night I took the lantern down to the staithe and sat with my feet over the black water. A dragonfly came and hung in the lamplight, its tail curling round in loops like a wick trimmed too short, and it stayed so long I thought it was waiting for something. Then it went out over the reeds and I could not tell where the light stopped and it began.

I am sending this with the last of the good paper. If you read it, write back and tell me which way the wind is blowing where you are, so I know which way to hold my hair.