Hygge Feature #16 hyggekrog

A hyggekrog is a small nook where one can feel safe. Maybe a window seat or a cosy reading corner, an inglenook fireplace or a small room. My study at home, for example, is quite a small, book-lined room with a real fire and a sofa to snuggle up on. It’s a burrow for humans, and may go back as an instinct to our cave-dwelling days where ancient humans were safe from wild beasts. Small children, and I was one such, love to make tents from blankets indoors, or play under the table, hide under the bed.

Photo by Angela Topping, of the wonderful lounge at Gladstone’s Library. There is a window seat in the bay to the right, and a bookcase full of books to the left, and in the winter, they light the fire. I loved this room when I was Writer-in-Residence in 2013. Cosy up with these poems:

Places to Run Away to Without Leaving Home

 

Leave Sunday-afternoon homework,

stealthily climb the stairs.

Snug into the linen cupboard, pull the door to.

Leave just a crack of light to pierce the cosy nest.

Daydream in muted light of burrows and bunnies,

hedgehogs and birds, under pillows and quilts

like warm snow, become a forest creature.

Snuggle in and doze.

 

Steal into your big brother’s room.

Sit in silence, touch hands-off things:

Delve into that realm so different from your own.

Gain clues from LP’s. Aftershave, big shoes.

Make roars through a black -rocket clarinet

Become a jazz man in a sleazy dive.

Read his diary, gather ammunition

for when blackmail might be a good idea.

 

Lean back against a fence, under a hedge,

where fairies flit and their mushroom tables

rise from dark soil beneath.

Catch flickers of sky from leather –shiny leaves,

spin dreams of adventures to come.

Smell sunshine on your tucked-up knees.

Let a caterpillar walk your finger.

Ignore Mum’s call, stay quiet and hidden.

                                                                                                                                                                               .

 

 MIki Byrne

 .

POEM FOR LYDIA

Lydia heard the wind outside.

It roared too loud; she woke and cried.

The great ash rocked, the clouds raced by;

how dark, the February sky.

Night and north wind rage around.

Sleep tight, Lydia, warm and sound.

No wind shall ever breach this wall.

The bough won’t break, your cot won’t fall.

.

Merryn Williams

 .

My Own Address

This oak roof comforts me whenever
Mother drives the hoover monster close;
I see its snarling metal teeth. The house is
my own address, my damask walls.

Under this table, I have kissed feet:
they are gone now, these people I love.
It‘s just me and my doll, and she
is no company at all. Her eyes are empty.

When my mother’s house is full again
I will emerge, be given sweets. My daddy,
home from work, will invite me
to sit in my other place, the house he makes

between his back and his chair’s back.
I do not know why hiding is needed
or why when I‘m sad I go under the bed
where balls of grey dust scut like rabbits.

.

Angela Topping

.

from The Five Petals of Elderflower (Red Squirrel Press 2016)

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