Humility

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Rick, the carpenter who built our gate, appears at the door. "Look what I found," he says, dangling my first long-out-of-print book of poems. At a garage sale in his neighborhood. In a box of loose plumbing parts, those rubber domes that go in the back of toilets. Marked one dollar. He hands over the book for me to sign. "Give you two dollars," I say, and he shakes his head. "Finders, keepers." Then I ask if they were selling lots of books, and he says, "No, only yours."