And yet here in the present, while a poet was still alive, it did. Matt said that Viridian didn’t qualify as a “rock-star poet,” and the term seemed so silly. But if there was such a thing as a poetry rock star, it was Viridian on this night, walking into her own reading.

I’d seen her at home, of course, but here she was among people who knew her, who wished to know her better. Here she was a power and a force. She wore a loose white dress over loose trousers, an eccentric outfit that she made seem modish and acceptable, just by wearing it. Her silver-gray hair fanned out behind her and was held back from her face with a scarf of peach-colored fabric. She made gray hair look like something you might want, too. Just as you might want her beautiful, untroubled face, her sun-darkened skin with its freight of history, of things lived and things understood.

And then she caught sight of me on her way to the front of the room and stopped.

“Carla! I’ve been thinking about you. You must come see me again. Let’s talk when I’m done here, shall we?”

I muttered, “Yeah, sure.”

I was both dumb and mute. I saw Matt looking at me. Other people, too. I shrugged, unable to explain anything. She probably wanted me to come weed her roses.

Viridian took a seat in the front row and the nervous man stood at the microphone to introduce her. The microphone squeaked and he had to adjust it. “Whoops,” he said, and laughed a little. He was so awkward. It was painful to watch him. It was an honor, he said, he was honored—here he unfolded a piece of paper—to welcome us and introduce a great and remarkable poet. “A poet for our, for all, times. All our times. Her voice is her own, distinct and personal, yet effortlessly . . .”

He stopped and started for no particular reason. He might have been running out of breath. I was rooting for him to please get through it. He read off the same things that were on the poster. How Viridian had won this award and that prize, how her books had been received with praise. “It’s been said of her poems that they reach us at a level we are not consciously aware of, like radio waves at an unfamiliar frequency. And yet we are consciously changed by them, by their extraordinary—” Here the microphone squeaked again and swallowed his words. “Their extraordinary grace and . . .” He fussed with the microphone and decided to stop talking, thank God. “Please welcome Viridian.”