Michael
Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, IL. His work
has been published in more than 22 countries. He is also
editor/publisher of 4 poetry sites, all open for submission, which can
be accessed from his Web site. His new chapbook, From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his other books are available for purchase on his Web site. His poem today paints a tender image of affection, present and remembered, filial and adoptive, in a striking, simple moment.

Soft nursing
5 solid minutes
of purr
paws padding
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 flowerbed of love,
and I give back affection
freely unlike a money exchange.
Done, I got to the kitchen, get out
Fancy Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,
a new work day begins.