From the album The Clearing (B Sides)
This is about chasing someone who exists only in the moment before contact. Every verse stages a new fantasy of almost reaching them, then builds the exact landscape that makes arrival impossible. The speaker knows they're alone but keeps constructing scenarios where the other person could theoretically show up.
Opened the letter I wish you had sent / But the words turned to water
The letter doesn't exist yet, and she knows it. The wish comes first, then the imagined object, then the reason it can't work. She's narrating her own hope collapsing in real time.
Raced through the rushes to where you should be / But the hillside turned frozen
That 'should be' gives it away. She's not looking for where you are. She's racing toward where the fantasy says you belong, and the environment kills the fantasy the second she gets close.
Can you hear me? I'm calling your name / But the wheels keep on turning
The train never stops. She's calling to someone who might not even be on it, asking a question she already knows the answer to. This is longing as performance with no audience.
If you get lost then let's meet at the bandstand / In Gospel Oak / I'll get there but you won't
She's making plans with someone she admits won't show. Gospel Oak is a real place in London, which makes the whole thing more brutal. This isn't metaphor. She's picking an actual spot for a meetup she knows is imaginary.
The song never says why the person is gone or whether they were ever really there. What sticks is the compulsion to keep staging new ways to almost reach them. She's not trying to find someone. She's building elaborate proof that they're unfindable.