The Delivery Guy

There is a poet I know. His poems had a steady stream of likes and an occasional heart on facebook.

I like his work, and told him so.

He made a wry face, twisting his mouth in a way that indicated appreciation and disagreement at the same time.

It was annoying. I told him, and asked, “Don’t you like compliments?”

“Yes,” he said, “but…”

I waited.

He let out a breath I didn’t know he had been holding.

“Let’s order a pizza.”

Not what I expected. “Umm, anchovies? And feta and pesto?”

He nodded. We placed the order. The conversation moved on to the building in the neighborhood, gentrification. It is like the weather — one can always talk about that.

Maybe 25 minutes later the buzzer rang. A kid had a flat box. The box had wonderful smells. We thanked him and slipped him a tip and brought the box inside.

We put slices on plates and found something cold to drink. We took a moment to savor the three kinds of salty flavor.

“It’s like that,” he said.

I tried to find the referent. “The rich people moving into the neighborhood?”

“No. The poetry.”

He pointed at the box, closed to keep the remaining pizza warm.

“The kid. He’s all we see. He does deliver the pizza, and he does a good job — right address, it’s still hot…”

“But…?”

“But if we praised him for the pizza, he would be embarrassed, right?”

I was getting it, my attention divided between his point and the tiny bones of an anchovy.

“You mean, he’s not the cook?”

My poet friend nodded.

“He’s good at what he does. And he’s the delivery guy.”

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In the lineage of this story, please see Socrates on poets in Plato’s Apology. And Elizabeth Gilbert’s classic TED talk on creativity.