The last line said, “If I am ever brave enough, I will come back and return this book myself.” I wept openly at the desk, and Rhiannon held my hand. She told me that her father had emigrated with his family, worked as a carpenter in Ontario, and married a kind woman named Ellen. He had loved his wife dearly, but he had kept that library book in his drawer for forty years, and he had talked about Cardiff at every Christmas.

Rhiannon said his last wish was not to bring a love letter. He wanted me to know that he had been grateful, every day of his life, for the one person who had made a lonely boy feel his poems mattered. When he fell ill, he realized he had never returned the book, and he could not bear the thought of it going unreturned. He asked her to travel to Cardiff and say sorry, and to say thank you.

I took her to my little office and made tea, and we talked for three hours. She showed me photographs. Tom as an old man with a white beard, laughing on a lake. Tom holding her as a baby. In the last picture, he was sitting by a window with the green book on his knee. I told her about the poems he used to leave for me, and I took her to the poetry shelf where he had hidden them.

Rhiannon stayed in Cardiff for a week, and we have written to each other every month since. The green book now sits in a small glass case near the front desk, with a card that reads, “Returned forty years late, with love.” Each spring a young poet leaves a folded verse between the pages of a random book. I never find out who it is, and I like it that way. I read every single one.