I’M THE ONE

            

He’s the one who says he sees the world as a glass half full.

Yet I’m the one who is sober everyday these days.

He’s the one who keeps saying that it is all very good.

But I’m the one willing to try again.

In the wasteland, I’m the one who claimed to feel the coming of the end of the world, yet…

he was the one afraid of the death threats to our film crew

and was the one who became terrified by the late night phone calls at the Hopi Motel.

He was the one who often claimed to know the secret songs of the priests of his desert people.

Yet I was the one who wanted Hebrew lessons for a daughter

who years later made a prayer in the wilderness of Judea.

He was the one who just hated cops.

Yet I was the one who rode with the homicide detective in Memphis

for weeks putting up with his cheap aftershave

and I was the one who dressed in an elegant Brioni suit for midnight mass

in a Florentine mountain chapel where I was the stranger.