Feather with doodle pattern design

The lock keeper at Hanwell says the river's running high again, so we're tied up below the mill and I finally have time to write properly. Dad would have laughed at the state of the cabin. The heron that sits on our roof every morning has been moulting over the stove, and I keep finding grey plumes in the bread bin.

Yesterday I found a proper one, a long brown flight feather caught in the towpath weed. I've pinned it above the table. You'd like the way the vanes have split and curled, ragged at one edge, as though something tried to drag it through a hedge and gave up. I went over it with my pen, dots and scallops, the way Gran used to work the crochet edging on her good tablecloth. Then the words started coming, and I let them go into the shapes. Broken, and beside it, perfectly. Enough. Time. I don't know who I was writing for.

Mr Cole came along the bank in his waders, looked at the feather and asked if I'd mended it. I said no, I'd only drawn on it. He said that's the trick with anything that's come apart: you go over the damage in ink and it reads as pattern. It's a farmer's way of saying something sensible, and I was annoyed that it helped.

Anyway, the quill end is still whole. That's the bit I keep turning in my fingers. I'll post the feather to you when we reach Oxford, if the pins hold. Tell me what you think the words are saying. I've decided it's a list, not a sentence.

Love, Jo