Magic


As the night bus crosses London Bridge mine is not the only head to turn to the left and marvel at Tower Bridge a short distance up the river; HMS Belfast moored between these two Thames’ crossings. How long before this too becomes something else in my life that loses its appeal to me because I take it for granted?
Last year when from a train carriage I saw Canary Wharf for the first time lit up on the horizon dwarfing everything else around it, it wasn’t a commercial and business centre standing as witness to Thatcherism and the use of private money to regenerate an area, what I saw was a magical fairy city.
Crystal towers illuminated a foreground of railway lines, goods yards and crumbling factories whose spectral forms could be seen despite the darkened sky; within its crystal walls princes and princesses, the progeny of mystical beings were gazing over the docks and catching reflections of themselves in the water.
That was last year though and now I pass the train journey home with my head in a book; I pass the magic by, or perhaps it passes me by, as the unfamiliar becomes familiar.

When I first met my ex there was magic. Our introductions had been made on a bridge in St James Park and the magic wasn’t connected with this strangers looks as the person before me carried slightly more weight than I usually find attractive; the magic came in making me believe in a future that amounted to more than just days passing, and the belief in this stranger’s eyes, which accompanied reassuring words, banished all doubt, even doubts I had about myself.
To say I didn’t love the person with whom I shared my life for four years is unfair on me, although I was hard on myself for a long time, but perversely, as my respect and love for my ex grew, the magic diminished until I again felt a need for more than just the passing of days.


R Silverthorne (May 2008)