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Where are you now, Kate O' Brien?

Where do our lost opportunities go?

The night we never met
My unmet friend
My unmet lover
the future I will never know

We almost met
one night
dancing in a stone church
in southern New Hampshire

a week before Halloween in 1994

One night, we never quite met,
and 7 years later I'm still thinking about it.
I still remember you were beautiful to me
but I've long forgotten your face and form
though I still think of you as beautiful
and I still remember your name

There were so many words I could have said
so many banalities I may have uttered
and at least then
we would have met
but my silence was complete even
when you sat next to me for that wonderful
long moment
and I almost got something past my thick tongue when
you got up and walked away
but I guess in some ways I've never walked away
from that moment, from that night

Oh, I have my excuses
I didn't have a job
I couldn't find a job
I was moving in a week
to South Carolina
The future was too uncertain to
start what I saw as a new relationship

That distant future, the future I never chose
was it worth it, to not chose it
by never speaking a single word to you
perhaps I should have said
something
at least to avoid seven years of later wondering

Kate O'Brien
I was remembering you this morning
wondering
wondering where are you now,
in whose arms do you find yourself,
to what circle of lives have you leant yourself?
I was remembering the night we never met:

Deep October
a brisk, not-cold night
live music dancing in the remnants
of an old stone church
to an improvisational groove becoming colors
under the dark - with stars.
You lived in a white house nearby
a white house I never found.
As soon as you left
I realized my great mistake
I asked every one I didn't know if
they could tell me anything about you.
I learned your name, your major, your old address,
and I learned of the party at the white house
where you lived - a party I never found, either.
I wrote you a note and left it at the wrong address;
I wandered Durham and Newmarket, and I stayed long
at all the cafés where I thought you might appear.
O! How I wanted to speak at least one
word to you before I left, but
I never saw you again
never spoke to you ever
and now it is seven years later
and I'm on a northbound train to Seattle
writing this about you
thinking about you
my mind
my whole mind
turning around you
and where are you now I've come seven years and 3,000 miles to
be thinking about you now
Where are you now?
Connecticut? New Hampshire, Maine, Colorado?
The train car just adjacent to mine?

I wonder if I would even recognize you now
I've already said that I've forgotten what you looked like
besides your dark hair
but I wonder if I would recognize the
spark which once drew me
I wonder if I would recognize you
as the one I missed

Kate
O!
Kate O'Brien
What would I even say to you now
Now that I've rejected
all notions of romanticism-
What would I say to you now
Now there is no possible way
you could ever save me from myself
or from my profession-
Now that I no longer want to be saved
like the way I did
the night we never met

I wonder if I could love you now
I wonder if I could know you now
I wonder if I would recognize you now
I wonder I wonder I wonder
I wonder if the tectonic plates of my memory
have pushed you up into some fantasy island
where I think my wishes might have once come true

But now, I'm left wondering how
this poem is going to end
I can't come up with a cute couplet to sum everything up
and I can't finally say everything
write down everything,
write down anything except
the beginning all over again

Where are you now, Kate O'Brien?
Where do our lost opportunities go?
The night we never met
My unmet friend
My unmet lover
The future I will never know

We almost met
one night
dancing in a stone church
in southern New Hampshire

it was the week before Halloween,
late October,
1994

do you remember?

©2002, by Neske.