Five Poems by Tim Holm

 

Temptation

Dare I taste the fruit of love, 

the sweet cherries and soft milk?

My eyes closed see bright stars above 

streaming to your heart of silk.

Dare I smell the morning dew 

rising from the source of life,

 

my brash desire charging through 

in step with a drum and fife?

Dare I touch with tickling ease 

that deep dark place you hide

while you so eager to appease 

are too flirty to decide? …

Anticipation

Asleep in his rocking chair come what may,

our family knew his will would soon succumb.

A soft breeze added comfort to the sway

that kept him in rhythm with life's humdrum.

He was happiest sunning on the deck

while he gazed out to where an island is,

to where gulls would serenade him and peck

his thoughts into fanciful ideas.

Winning sea battles to secure his throne

was his childhood dream that came back to him

as the enemy struck, he stood alone,

his chance for victory in fog was grim.

When the cannons fired he knew it was then

he must seize the day or won't fight again.

Routine

Each day I need to watch the sun free fall,

its wings stretched outward in colourful flight,

and stay until it tucks its tiny ball

into the silent, waiting dark of night.

Its last wink smiling is its beacon call

to guide me safely into bedtime sleep.

Perhaps its light is there for me to keep

my dreams in lively motion until morn

when with its restless rising, first a peep,

I share in its routine of being born.

Calls

We come and go, but in between

there is so very much to do.

We're spared recalling all we've seen,

both good and bad times we've been through :

three days of thirst in Timbuktu,

a love we thought was tried and true,

the hunger youth brought to survive,

the waking up to light, alive;

that worried moment of our need

to poo, to pee and sometimes bleed.

We struggle long to shun the calls

that make us nature's fettered thralls

but never seem to gain control

of what gives life that finished whole.

No wonder we succumb one day

to bruises of the mind and heart.

The passage only goes one way,

though where it ends lies a new start.

Chances

Chance leads to change if you follow, in kind,

as each new step grows forward in motion.

It sneaks up out of darkness from behind

after years of your struggling devotion.

It's all around when in need or want

but you are too busy searching to see,

then follows you in everything to haunt

after having missed it, regretfully.

It's one of those creepy from out of nowheres

that lead you through life when you least expect.

It's a little help to deal with unawares

or when your will ignores the circumspect.

It comes and goes in surprise starts and throws

to help you reach an earnest, readied goal

or shows you what the whole world also knows

your own inertia subsequently stole.

If you have it, it will become a link

to what you want but thought could not be dreamed,

to how it changes what you do and think

into chances that once had only seemed.

Tim Holm - Born in Nebraska, USA, "un voyageur européen de la culture", Tim HOLM is firstly a poet: The Quiet Sun / Le Soleil Calme, manuscript translated into French by Claude HELD, selected poems published by Carcanet Press-UK, in the collection Poetry of Europe, as well as has appeared in publications like : La Traductière-France, L.M. BARROS, ed. 2023, Caesurae-India, Cécile OUMHANI, guest ed. 2022, Poetry International Rotterdam, Martin MOOI, ed. Anthology UNICEF-Rencontres Européennes – Europoésie-France, Joël Conte-TAILLASSON, ed. 2023.  

Next he is a poetry and screenplay translator, a playwright, a lyricist, (Songs and Nursery Rhymes of the USA, Auvidis-Harmonia Mundi, and a dialog writer/actor’s dialog coach on feature film and TV.  

He holds an MACW, Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch International, London and Oxford, UK and Sligo-Ireland, carried out on an Antioch International Literary Fellowship and WB Yeats Society Scholarship award. His DEA, Diplôme d'etudes approfondie, in modern literature on Women Characters in the Verse Plays of WB Yeats, is from the Sorbonne, Paris IV. 

HOLM was founding Associate Editor with M. LYNCH, ed., of the Paris/Atlantic International Review of Poetry created in 1982 and published by the American College, now University, in Paris, and also, Representative in France for the IWP, International Writing Program, of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, under the direction of the founders, Paul and Hualing Nieh ENGLE.