Soft nursing

5 solid minutes

of purr

paws paddling

like a kayak competitor

against ripples of my

60 year old river rib cage−

I feel like a nursing mother

but I’m male and I have no nipples.

Sometimes I feel afloat.

Nikki is a little black skunk,

kitten, suckles me for milk,

or affection?

But she is 8 years old a cat.

I’m her substitute mother,

afloat in a flower bed of love,

and I give back affection

freely unlike a money exchange.

Done, I go to the kitchen, get out

Fancy Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,

a new work day begins.