Hygge Feature #32 Enduring Love

Valentine’s Day is not hygge, as such, because it’s about impressing the one you love with a dozen red roses and champagne, and other expensive gifts. It’s about romance. Love for me is what’s left when romance has gone and we are caught up in supporting each other through everyday life, good times and bad times, and in the routines we devise over time for our comfort and relaxation. That is hygge. This kind of love endures through years of togetherness, and does not go when the partner dies, but stays as long as the memories do.

 

Photo by Angela Topping

 

Marriage Tea

Tea is a hug in a china mug
hot and strong, without sugar
and only the merest whisper of milk.

First thing in the morning
it is the kiss for sleeping beauty
brought to the bedside as the sky warms up.

It can be dressed in finer clothes
but the everyday chipped mug,
after all these years, is enough for me.

Angela Topping

first published on Nutshells and Nuggets

 

 
You Help Me Fly

For Richard
‘He is my rock.’
she said,
as if with pride.

You, my love,
are not my rock.

For rocks immovable
inflexible
smack too much
of millstones
round my neck.

Nor are you my anchor,
holding so tight
I cannot
ride with the tide
of my desire.

You are the string
on which,
kite-like I fly
and soar to heights
I could not reach alone.

And if I fall,
I know
that you’ll be there,
to catch
and hold me close.

 

Mavis Gulliver

 

 

Anyhow

Suddenly I’m old.
You never saw me like this:
the little wounded eyes,
the fleshy wrinkles
or the wayward wiry hair.
I’m not the woman you once loved.
Grief damaged me
but I survived,
the woman who loved you
and loves you still
but goes on, anyhow.

Linda Goulden

First appeared in Poems for Survival, The Fat Damsel

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