Poem of the Week: “Christmas Tree”

Christmas Tree

for Jacob

You are my second grandson, Christmas-born.
I put on specs to read your face. Whispering
Sweet nothings to your glistening eyelids,
Am I outspoken compared with you? You sleep
While I carry you to our elderly beech.
Your forefinger twitches inside its mitten.
Do you feel at home in my aching crook?
There will be room beneath your fontanel
For this branchy diagram of winter.
I take you back indoors to the Christmas tree.
Dangling for you among the fairy lights
Are the zodiac’s animals and people.

—Michael Longley, from A Hundred Doors (2011)