He muttered something that sounded like “Yeah, whatever,” and walked away, hands jammed in his pockets. I was pretty sure he’d go home and write a poem about it all.

Party

Viridian didn’t have a Wikipedia page or a Facebook account, wasn’t on Twitter or Instagram. How could she ignore all that? Was it even legal? When I went online to find her books, all but one, The Doubter, were unavailable except in digital form, which was depressing. Maybe she had a thing about social media and privacy, but I didn’t think she wanted her writing to be a private thing. Matt had said she was a cult favorite. I had to wonder if she was obscure for reasons of her own choosing, or something else.

I had better luck finding her in anthologies, where a number of her poems had appeared. It took some time nosing around different websites, but I found a couple of the ones she’d read aloud. I held my breath looking at them now in black and white, but the magic held. Now that I’d heard them, they were mine. Here was the one about doors, the choice of doors, golden, silver, or lead, which I understood was the fairy tale riddle, and you were meant to choose the virtuous lead rather than be misled by greed or pride. Yet the poem was also about unlocking a lover’s nature, and here the triumphal choice was gold, gold, gold, because that was the lover’s worth.

When Aaron asked me about Viridian’s reading, I’d said it was interesting. I’d said I was glad I’d gone. But I didn’t tell him or anyone how it had changed and rearranged something needful in me.

The internet served up a few more answers, and a lot more questions. I found some stray bits of biography, mostly in essays or chapters about other poets. Her name, one of them, was Linda Rose Cunningham. Or Linda Ricker. Or Linda Ricker Boone. I guessed the different names had come from different marriages, though I also liked to imagine her having aliases, like the fugitives from justice that appeared in the newspaper. When and why she became Viridian, it didn’t say.

How old was she? Somewhere north of seventy, to judge by the other poets she was “linked to,” which I hope did not just mean “slept with.” She was born in Michigan and had lived in New York and Texas and now California. In New York she was “linked to” the famous alcoholic and suicidal poet, Mathias. In Texas she had lived for a time in an artist’s compound funded by a tech billionaire. Useful facts, but incomplete. I found a newspaper photo from a few years ago, Viridian reading on an outdoor stage with signs demanding an end to nuclear power. And then a picture of her much younger self that made me stare and keep staring.