This Business of Loving

This business of loving – the squeezing

and pushing and teasing and shoving –

the nestling and nuzzling, the pinches

and jabs in the belly, the butt and the arm:

the rampant solicitous charm all bestowed

like a truckload of coal in the summer

to somewhere that didn’t need heat. Your

love, my ecstatic confrère, has me beat.

.