The Kitten and the Butterfly

At nearly sunrise this morning, I noticed my butterfly bush was violently shaking.

I wasn’t sure whether I was actually seeing it breathe or if I was still in the midst of waking.

There, in the center of the flowering bush, was something black and white.

I squinted and tried to focus despite the waning early-morning light.

A kitten! Mesmerized by a tiny monarch butterfly! It seemed to me that both of them were at play.

As I watched in wonder, the feline didn’t attack what might have been its prey.

I grabbed my camera and caught this little one with the butterfly, but then they both caught me and ran away.

When I was younger, and my thoughts would snap, crackle, and pop, I’d keep them deep inside of me, hoping they would disappear.
I wasn’t ready to pull them out, so I repressed them out of love and respect—not for me, but for the others. I was in a vacuum of fear.

But after a while, I grew tired of protecting everyone but myself. I needed to eradicate the personal devaluation and the poisonous fright.
So now, instead of running from the snap, crackle, and pop, I sit down and write.

When a snap, crackle, and pop creeps into my brain, I have no choice but to write what it’s about.
I have to get that snap, crackle, and pop on paper before the next snap, crackle, and pop seeps out.

I realize in my twilight years that I can’t escape my thoughts. They snap, crackle, and pop when they want, and they don’t have to rhyme.
It could be a nightmare in the middle of a sleepless night or in the morning while I’m reading the New York Times.

The snap, crackle, and pop are annoyingly nonstop.
But now, instead of running from the truth, I run for my laptop.

The never-ending snap, crackle, and pop compel me to write, no matter the setting.
Hell, I was writing poetry in a bathroom stall at my own daughter’s wedding.

I could be sleeping, driving, walking, exercising, cooking, or cleaning.
Pretty much any time that snap, crackle, and pop leaks into my disordered psyche, my mind starts careening.

I have thousands of emails and texts I sent to myself, a jumble of words on tiny scraps of paper.
And endless lamentations written to a mom and dad, who I wish had never been my maker.

I have a gazillion notes on my phone and volumes of journals on my shelf.
And don’t judge me, but I even make ridiculously long phone calls to myself.

My mind doesn’t stop. With every snap, crackle, and pop, I’m like a robot trained to write it down.
I’m programmed to write. I compulsively spill and spell it out, just in time for another round.

I’m on a mission to block the snap, crackle, and pop, and yet I can’t help but remember,
what I fight every day to forget: the fire, the third-degree burns, and that devastating night in September.

I have no interest in turning every snap, crackle, and pop into a rhyme, a story, or a post.
But I’ve got no choice; otherwise, I feel like I’m nothing but a dried-up, burnt-out piece of milquetoast.

On 9/11, my office was on the corner of Broadway and 4^th Street. Every day, my round-trip, six-block, same-side-of-the-street walk from the E Subway West 4^th Street stop to my office went like this:

I would pass a police command station permanently parked outside of Washington Square Park by New York University. In the morning, there was always the same police officer—a graying man in his fifties, bopping up and down to music emanating from his mobile post. Sometimes it was Elvis or The Beach Boys; sometimes it was Frankie Valli.

On the way home at night, I would pass the command post just about the time that the morning and evening officers were changing shifts. The evening officer was in his mid-twenties, and his music of choice was The Police, which I found hilariously ironic.

I got to know their names—Officer Tommy in the morning and Officer Kevin in the evening. Kevin, the one in his 20s, would occasionally play Beatles music, and I would compliment him on his choice, sharing with him how I grew up on the Beatles. When Kevin started to play less Police and more Beatles, Tommy would tease Kevin and say that he was playing Beatles music for the “Madam Publisher.” Kevin had the cutest, impish side grin, and he reminded me so much of my son.

And then came 9/11. Following the horrific events of that day, our office building was government-mandated to shut down for a few days. My first day back into the city and back into my routine was a tough one.

The smell was unbearable, and I panicked at the thought of what it was. There were flyers everywhere—faces of hundreds of men and women affixed to telephone poles, fences, park benches, and trees. Many of the flyers covered the sidewalks and streets, and the pedestrians walked oh-so carefully to avoid stepping on the faces of the missing.

As I approached my half-block point from the mobile police station, the music was also missing. In the distance, I saw Officer Tommy running toward me, saying, “Thank God, you’re okay. I haven’t seen you in a while. I thought something had happened to you.” As he wrapped his arms around me, I felt awkward but also comforted.

Then he placed his hands on my shoulders, and through tears, said, “Kevin, the night cop—you know, the kid—he went to the World Trade Center to help that morning, and nobody has seen him since.” With his hands still on my shoulders, we stood there for a few seconds, both of us slightly embarrassed. “He was my kid’s age,” Officer Tommy continued. “And now he’s gone, just like that.”

Every day, we would catch up for a few minutes on my way to the office. He would go to Ground Zero most nights after his shift to help “bring his brothers home.” And he never played music again.

One morning, Tommy told me he was struggling. I told him that I found writing poetry to be good therapy, and that he should try it. “I’m no writer. I’m a New York City cop,” was his reply.

But he followed my suggestion and one morning handed me a poem about 9/11, which I immediately read when I got to my office. I was looking forward to seeing him that evening to tell him how talented he was and how his poem left me trembling.

But he wasn’t there that night, or the next morning, or the morning after that. At first, I thought maybe he was on vacation. But after a week had gone by, I asked the officer on duty, “Where’s Tommy?” And he answered, “He’s gone. He retired from the force. He couldn’t take the job no more.”

In Tommy’s honor, below is the 9/11 poem he gave me the last time I saw him. How terribly sad that I never got the chance to tell him what I thought about his stirring and poignant poem or to say a proper goodbye.

HONOR GUARD AT GROUND ZERO
By my friend, Police Officer Thomas Brennan from the 6^th Precinct

Rake gently over our brother’s grave.
Speak softly where he sleeps.
His soul ascends
His spirit raised
Raised well above these ruins of death
He speaks to us
We stand erect
Amid the numbing breeze of winter’s breath
We salute our brother and raise our palms.
Raised well above our breast
Our palms outstretched
We crease our brows, our minds, our hearts.
Where underneath our brother lies
In sorrow, we salute him.