Hyggelig homes are comfortable, where one feels at home, not the ones where you are frightened to crease a cushion or put your feet up, but where you can kick back and relax, where you feel welcome and there is room to sit down, the kettle on and hot drinks and cake in the offing. There is no standing on ceremony. These home-makers know the value of making things for the home, of light within and a view from a window. Such homes are full of homemade touches and unique things that give pleasure and tell a story.
HOMEMAKING
Gulls tumble screeching
in the raw estuary blow
as we pop the radio on.
There are those who frown still
but here on our windy Welsh hill
we’re making a home together.
She bends to the curtains
as I open a flatpack
resinous wood-tang wafting.
Berlioz, Mahler, Miles Davis:
hours fly in the sheer joy
of making,
her needle and thread
my screwdriver and mallet
in harmony.
On the fence outside
a robin sings
his winter song.
We’re done:
her beautiful curtains hung
my chest of drawers looking good.
Come the spring
we’ll plant our small garden
and maybe fresh smiles will bloom.
Paul Beech
Old November
Darkness arrives earlier these days.
School done, older kids dawdle home
scraping the last of the light.
The week-long mist cushions
the hedgerow, leaving tears
for the spiders and remaining leaves.
If I stand across the street
from me, I can make myself out
syncing to an unheard tune.
My kitchen’s fluorescence is cold
against the night’s soft forgiving
black. No moon on show.
I could close the blind but no, I never
remember how my life plays out through
the window’s screen and always
too late, I realise the unseeable.
My heart sucks up the last of the light,
not wanting to starve itself.
Jenny Hope
In these uncertain times
I watch the mountain
from my bedroom
window, see it shine
clear above a falling
caul of mist.
One flight of fancy
and I’m patchworked
across its firm full
breast, listen,
to a throbbing
deep faraway-down
in the bowels
of weathered rock
locked & enmeshed
before seasons
and habitations,
the heartbeat now
and in the beginning
when ice melted,
wind sang,
soil and seed
packed cavities
of risen stone,
birth begetting birth
and God the Mother
suckling her creation.
Sheila Jacob
Photo by Angela Topping
Angela Topping 
Thanks for publishing my poem, Angela. It’s heartening indeed to see my ‘Homecoming’ sharing Feature # 26 with such gorgeously evocative poems as Jenny Hope’s ‘Old November’ and Sheila Jacob’s ‘In these uncertain times’. And I do like your cosy photo – a Persian rug, perhaps?
I admire the way your hygge features each combine poems that complement each other, with a great intro and photo. Taken together, your hygge features illustrate the rich variety of work within the genre and comprise, in effect, a fascinating anthology.
My very best,
Paul
Ooops, my poem is of course called ‘Homemaking’, not ‘Homecoming’!!
Thank you Angela for the continuing pleasure of reading your selected Hygge poems. I very much enjoyed all three of the Hygge poems today, also your photo. Yes indeed I loved Paul’s ‘Homemaking’ it is as you can imagine, close to my heart.
Maureen x
Really enjoying these poems, and a special mention for the photo too! Wonderful.