Eye within a mandala on the upper back

The new post at Halfway Bridge is quieter than they promised, and the wind comes off the river so hard that the ledger pages curl before I can write the figures down. Yesterday the captain had the old gate repainted. Above the arch, where the iron lotus petals fan out over the barrier, the smith's plain disc has become an open eye, rimmed in black, with a white glint on the iris like a drop of rain caught on glass.

Everyone grumbles that it looks like a fortune teller's sign. I rather like it. When the lorries queue at dawn I look up and it looks back at them, patient and unblinking, and the drivers sit a little straighter in their cabs. Petals and pointed triangles radiate out from it, very neat, the sort of pattern my grandmother stitched on the hems of her good shawls. I counted the points once: forty-eight on the outer ring alone. I could not sleep that night for counting.

Last Tuesday a boy came across with a goat and no papers, and I was ready to send him back. Then I looked up, the lamp caught the iris, and I found myself asking him his name instead. He told me it was Tomas. The captain signed the goat through as livestock and nobody argued.

I think the eye is only meant to watch, but I have started to believe it also keeps a record of the things we decide to let go. Write back and tell me whether the river is still high at home. I will look up and see whether the eye blinks.

Yours, Anselm