Hygge Feature #23 Promises of Spring

In January one can start planning outdoor projects with a sense of them becoming possible soon. Small signs of new growth delight us. There’s talk of what to grow in the allotment as we note bulbs pushing through, though there is still a chance of snow and frost.  We also fondly remember previous springs.

Photo: Snowdrops in Daresbury, by Angela Topping

 

First Earlies

Cold metal freezes the fingers
grasping for the smooth
wooden handle’s safety.
Compost, nurtured and transformed
from last year’s waste,
trickles from the silver spade
into the trench bottom.

Potatoes sprutted, in the warmth
of the greenhouse, ready
for the burial routine of spring.

Carefully positioned,
spruts downward,
to aid their search for food.
A compost blanket,
delicately sprinkled on top
and a prayer, softly spoken,
for a prosperous harvest
in the sunshine of
summer days ahead.

 

 
Sharon Fishwick

 

 

Helmsley Silver Birch

Arboreal ballerina,

pirouetting confetti,

assumes first position

in an old English churchyard.

 

Harry Gallagher

 

KILLINS LANE 

High banks
along this very old lane.
Trees with ivied feet,
fingers just touching.

Oh that you would talk to me.
Yes a library has knowledge,
but it is the stars
that know your secrets.

Maureen Weldon

 

Published by Coffee House Poetry magazine

Included in her pamphlet Midnight Robin, published by Poetry Space Ltd.

Hygge Feature #11:Promises of Spring

Today’s photo is by Sally Evans, of the first spring flowers in her garden in Scotland. It has inspired today’s aspect. In winter, while enjoying the warmth indoors, planning for spring, such as what vegetable seeds to plant for the allotment, and observing early spring flowers, leads us to gently anticipate the joys to come, while still living in the now. Likewise, as in one of these poems, memories of the previous summer keep us warm, and in some cases preserved in wine, jams and honey, keep us well fed too.

Honeycomb

Around me the intense buzzing of the bee
busy on the yellow rue blossoms,
gathering future honey for the hive;

the sun high in the blue haze of sky
sending light and shadow
in patterns on the grey stone wall;

colours and fragrances
freshly manifest among the green –
purple lavender and sage,
vibrant lobelia blue, rose pink.

The young ash waves his leaves
greeting the crazily skimming swifts,
music seeps from the house next door
and the black cat rolls in rapture on the path.

Meanwhile I sit here,
busily gathering words
and storing summer’s sweetness
to spread on winter days.

Hilaire Wood

An invitation

Do you remember that first glass
of Vouvray? That tingle? A little bit of bite?
My garden’s like that today, everything
opening up. It smells of growth,
as warmth releases little puffs
of energy from every stretching stem.

We’ll walk along the narrow path
so you can feel the forms of leaf
and twig on either side. And then
the lawn, how your steps compress it.
It does no harm; it springs back
after we’ve gone.

Listen to the wind pushing through
the birch trees, moaning in the wires,
notice how the sun’s heat
switches on and off – cloud shutters.
Then we’ll sit, sheltered, and talk,
my cat in your lap or mine,
and we’ll try to make sense
of our separate worlds.

Colin Will

Eloquence
What is eloquent is the passing moment and the moment that will come after it.
Maurice Blanchot

This time, like all the other times, the sun
dips, darkens the face of the island, turns
the green of the cypresses black, the planes
this ill-defined grey. You’re taking time out

on the quayside, wondering what makes this
autumn, the light still cutting the water
to crystal, hazing the line of the hills.
When a ferry boat chugs from the mooring,

you follow its wake across to the shore
where you see it: there’s smoke in the forest;
men burning the branches they lopped, turning
the old growth to ash, this summer’s leavings

to powder and paste that the rains will sift
into the soil.  It’s then that you notice
the bells have something to say. Late and still
counting, they’re filing the season away.

Brian Johnstone

Hygge Feature #7 The love of children

What could be more hygge that cuddling up with small children, especially grandchildren? All of the pleasure and none of the work, plus all the happy memories of being a parent, relived. And the love children offer is so unconditional. Photo by Ken Patterson and sent to me by Colin Will.

Holding pattern

Some kind of delay before take-off,
an under-estimate of landing rigmaroles,
passport control – the barriers politicians
put between people – baggage reclaim
and the obligatory airside toiletings,
mean we’re far too early for the family.

I’m wondering, since it’s a couple of years
between visits, how much the children
have changed, how they’ll react.
And then they come through,
son pushing overloaded trolley,
daughter-in-law smiling, grandson shy.

But my granddaughter sees us, shouts
and starts to run. She leaps into my arms
snuggles her head into my neck,
breathes against me. As I turn her
to and fro I see smiles and moist eyes
on the faces of bystanders,
little ripples of remembered joys.

Colin Will

First published in Every Day Poems

Arms full

This door is always open,
no need for keys, or bell.
I untangle my bunny slippers
from where they wait with
the pink-glitter wellies. Squeals
of delight run into the kitchen
to hug my knees. Then a cuppa
and ginger biscuit from the shelf
set aside for my special treats.
Chubby bodies clamber to my lap
demand silly stories, tickles and
disco dancing. Other folk might
want candles, log fires and soft rugs.
Cuddles with these wee astronaut-
mermaids are enough for me.

Finola Scott

MY GRANDSON WRITES HIS NAME

for Ziyad

The first letter he has known for months
in zig-zag lines getting nowhere.

Turned on its side and crayoned blue
he can stretch it out like a river;

or if he changes colour can make
a mountain, some grass, a fire.

Cut back to its simplest form
and laid out in rows like ghosts,

he follows the dots over and over
before he does it on his own.

When he learns its sound is a buzz
he likes, he hears it and sees it again

in the stripes of zebra,
in the bars of a place called zoo.

 He has five shapes to master.
They stand above or hang below

a line that’s always there –
even if you think it’s vanished.

But when it all comes together
in a final downward stroke

– staunch and straight as he will be –
it tells him who he is,

this name he has always heard
ever since he’s been here.

David Cooke

 

 First published in Cortland Review (US)