When I was a kid I made chains
One every year, hung near my bed
About five loops from each single sheet
Of cheap construction paper-
Alternating red and green
every morning tear one off
Mark the distance between
Now and Christmas
With a visual point of reference
The practice seemed to shorten
The days like loops in the chain
And on Christmas eve the last link hung
Alone and I couldn’t sleep
Walk to the kitchen about ten times
Throughout the evening
Checking the clock on the microwave
Wondering if 3 am was too early
To wake my folks
Exhausted from a long night
Wrapping presents & filling stockings
And what relief when I suddenly woke
To find the faithful morning
Arrived without my help
And so I learned in microcosm
The great relief that first
Christmas did bring
And no wonder this holiday
Unlike so many others
Is known for its songs
Carols and choirs
The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris’s Advent series on Moss Kingdom:
Incarnation, Christmas Eve, Kings, Some Kind of Glory, Chains, Gifts, Quotidian Couple, A Thousand Lights, Eve & Mary, Treasured Up, Christmas, Winter Staves, The Glorias, Cherubim, Joseph, Strange Redeemer, Womb, Magi, Temple Trough, Advent, Lord’s Day, Far as the Curse is Found, Jubilee, The Massacre of the Innocents, Liturgical Time
Other Advent poems on Moss Kingdom:
December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice, Of Edmund and Aslan, Tiptoe Hope, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats