As I understand it, you are asking for an expression with respect to the number of permutations of n items taken r at a time; i.e., your index should be r instead of k because otherwise it is not bound in the expression ∑ⁿᵣ₌₀P(n,r) xʳ a⁽ⁿ⁻ʳ⁾ that is analogous the Binomial Theorem (x+a)ⁿ = ∑ⁿᵣ₌₀ (ⁿᵣ) xʳ a⁽ⁿ⁻ʳ⁾. (I'd love to be able to use Mathjax to present a better expression, but Unicode will have to do for now.)
P(n,r) = (ⁿᵣ) r! = (n)ᵣ, also known as Pochhammer's symbol, or falling factorial is the coefficient of each term xʳ a⁽ⁿ⁻ʳ⁾. Hence, (x+a)⁽ⁿ⁾ is the simplest closed-form expression that I can think of, where the exponent n is replaced by (n), with the subscript r removed (and understood as the falling factorial in context), as it is the index for the coefficients P(n,r).
BTW, the Umbral Taylor series would give the same expression, but the overarching theory that abstracts all of the above would probably be related to generalized hypergeometric, Fox-Wright, and elliptic hypergeometric functions. If the recent proof of the ABC conjecture by Mochizuki holds, then we can expect much deeper connections to surface.