An infant wriggling
In your arms
Grunting, rooting, writhing
Crying
Pushing against you-
Or melding into the
Topography of your torso
True antonym of “abstract”
A shoulder wet with reality
Should remind you
of Christmas


The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris’s Advent series on Moss Kingdom:
IncarnationChristmas EveKingsSome Kind of GloryChainsGiftsQuotidian CoupleA Thousand LightsEve & MaryTreasured UpChristmasWinter StavesThe GloriasCherubimJosephStrange RedeemerWombMagiTemple TroughAdventLord’s DayFar as the Curse is FoundJubileeThe Massacre of the InnocentsLiturgical Time

Other Advent poems on Moss Kingdom:

December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter SolsticeOf Edmund and AslanTiptoe HopeThe Second Coming by William Butler Yeats