Radial mandala of loops, spirals and an Om symbol

The kettle's on again and I've finally found the napkin Uncle Tom covered the week before he went into hospital. You remember it, the one he drew while we waited on the ferry at Lymington, forty minutes late and him refusing to sit down. Every loop on it is a tide he said he'd watched come round the Needles. He took the spirals to be eddies, and the little hooked sign he copied off a tea chest in Liverpool he swore meant hum, though nobody in the family could tell us why.

Along the top there's a sun with rays and an eye squeezed in between them, which he called the bar at Poole on a good morning. From every edge of the ring the dotted lines run inwards, faint at first and then heavier, like a crew coming down the gangway toward the one lamp still lit. They all stop at the same place, a clean white space in the middle, and he never once put a mark in it.

I asked him about that the last time I visited. He said the middle was for whoever was steering, and then he fell asleep with the pen still in his hand.

So I've framed it and left the centre blank. Come home at Easter and bring your own pen. I think you'll know what goes there better than I do.

Love, Marjorie