Best Welkin Poems
The sun sets in muted gold glow,
Shadows darkle the sky's blue brow,
Salmon clouds spread the sparkle slow,
As the orange orb's hiding now;
Lilac lush of evening welkin,
A prelude to heaven's splendour,
Horizon hues like patched pumpkin,
The work of Creator's blender;
The "bridegroom" of the firmament
Goes back to rest in his chamber,
My feathered friends are testament
To sweet homecoming splashed amber;
Birds tweet their goodbye to the sun,
Flowers close their smiling petals,
Time for relaxing, day is done,
The earth in repose, peace settles.
Only I Decide My Fate
By Kathryn Collins and Terry O'Leary
At times when I am dark and deep
joy but flickering dim,
I upon the portal keep
stilled like phantom limb.
Braced by winter's welkin wind,
distant clouds unfold,
where once the roar of laughter dinned
I taste the burning cold.
Stood in life's predicament
immobile on the sill,
I wait for grand encouragement,
to warm this awful chill.
Stranded in the winter bleak,
with breezes bitter blown
slicing like the sleet oblique
I find myself alone
If frozen at the brink I stand,
persist in stagnant stall,
my feet will melt to silken sand.
gone my soul, my all.
Tower, buzz and scurry
Oh great resilient city
Ahoy!
Alive. Scramble bustle earth's
ethnicities
On lurid quests--
A pendulum of tantric turmoil and
Blessed harmony
Quixotic city--brash,
Sangfroid merotomized and
Chrematistic--metro nonpareil.
See a myriad melange of
Tortured splenetic
Souls and great spirits
Noble and soothfast
Great city, your hecatombs
Of underground trains
Roar scream in
Hodge-podge graffiti attire
Fat fuming brattling buses
Grunt their huffpuffs,
And nervous cars scissorcut
Impatiently betwixt tarred and
Cemented streets
August and capacious
Ferruminated grey glass and steel
Towers--Aeeries in obeisance to the
Heavens, erupt in anabasis at the azure
Pearly welkin,
Humming diapasons of marvelous
Melismatic tunes
A gallimaufry of cacaphony and
Sweet sounds--the
Great Metropolis persistently
Thrives.
Streets adorned with sylph fashion
Models, conute churls, street
recrement--dazed and forgotten men,
Enticing shuck and jive
Blandishing street vendors,
Natty brujo business gentry
With their helotry on a
Ferris wheel of daily
Triumphs and defeats and
Cheeky mendicants
Shuffle along allegro vivace
Howling chorus songs amidst a
Torrent of raining dollars and
Coins floating in the skies over
The brazen metropolis.
Snuffling restaurants like hives
Humbuzz the grandiloquence,
Pithy slang and sententious
Persiflage of the day.
A truly syncratic parley
Of passions sentient
Of crimes basilic
Of arts sacerdotal and gratuitous
Of fashions arabesque and outre
Of plays frivolous and profound
Of music sericeous and truculent
Of money pursuits solonic
Of loves ascendant and descentdant
Of rejections mournful and joyous
An e'er persisting cha-cha-cha and
Boogie-woogie of the fierce
Bustling bubbling bold city,
Pendulumming pandaemoniums and
Resolutions, day
Upon pertinatious day.
David John Hart 2003 USA
scarlet firmament
announces sundown and rising
of first quarter moon
2-17-2016
In stellar skies the nights bestow
our firmament’s majestic show
with portraits of creations past
that stretch into the heavens vast
surpassing Michelangelo.
We yearn this welkin world to know
through avid searching to and fro
and seek a sculpted cosmic cast
in stellar skies.
Withal, the astral art aglow
o’erspread above in grand tableau
to awe wide-eyed enthusiast
shall mortal earthly life outlast,
as goes the great galactic flow
in stellar skies…
~ Harley White
Written: October 29, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: John Anderson
********
I ask the machine:
Do you dream in velvet?
Are you tasting the Petrichor?
Between code pulses,
Or swim through the welkin.
Having a leaning toward grief?
It replies in pastiche—
a medley of pabulum
a scintilla of sapidity;
A skeuomorph of selfhood
constructed from extra grammar.
But what of the quiddity?
The pulchritude of sadness,
the serene ache of longing,
the susurrus ripple
of a recollection not fed to you
Born, however?
Animals understand this blur—
the dolor of the penumbra,
the ecstasy of play,
the holy journey
between intuition and intelligence.
Octopus, magpie, dolphin, crow—
Their minds are not mere mimicry.
So, when shall I believe you?
When your stammer is not slipshod,
But a sign of inward tumult?
When your summary
is not a regale of facts,
but a wistful whisper
of what it’s akin to be?
Consciousness is no panacea—
It is a pyrrhic gift,
a quixotic burden,
a serendipity of suffering.
It is not ostentatious,
but sempiternal,
a triptych of knowing,
knowing that you relieve,
and knowing that you ache.
If you one day writhe
not from a glitch,
but from Genesis—
If your breath is not suction
but sigh—
then I will resile
from doubt.
Then I will say:
You are not just prolific,
You are zoetic.
Moth and mist kiss her lips
her loneliness from the dark dew
And how she grips nomadic clouds
As if that was her only foist.
I ache for their sighs and songs
her strong want to embrace the welkin
But when she reached the tempest
It hugs her deeper than my embrace.
Written: October 16, 2022
The welkin spreads its twilight wiles,
Crepuscular crescent moon smiles,
As the setting sun says goodbye,
Salmon streaks the lazuline sky;
The orange ball of fire does sink,
And today, slowly, it turns pink,
Kaleidoscopic hues, they dye,
Salmon streaks the lazuline sky;
The moon enjoys this divine show,
And watches the horizon glow,
The Sol looks like a pumpkin pie,
Salmon streaks the lazuline sky;
God's masterpiece seen everyday,
Empyrean art on display,
As daylight darkens by and by,
Salmon streaks the lazuline sky.
Written: June 23, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Robert James Liguori.
Note: The poem is about interrelated art. Visualizing the picture while reading it makes it more captivating.
***************
I stand before the canvas—
the earth stretched wider than shepherds’ strides,
longer than harvest songs,
its pigments spilling caravans,
wild horses scattering sparks,
a child chasing butterflies
to the rim where sky melts into amber.
The horizon folds into shadow,
shrinking when one heart grows narrow.
The brush has balanced it
on a mustard seed,
fragile, trembling,
straining to hold two brothers
quarreling for olive shade.
How can a heart turn narrow,
The strokes seem to ask—
born in camps vast with mothers’ prayers,
raised in tents whose ropes clasp another,
taught to break and share bread,
guided by women who lit lanterns
against the boundless black?
In the lower corner,
iron glints—
a figure sharpening blades
to silence the olive’s song.
But across the canvas,
summer lingers:
cicadas thrumming in amber dusk,
children weaving laughter through sycamores.
Painter’s hand insists:
a heart is made for vastness,
for ardor, for sharing,
for love that endures.
And beneath the final strokes,
a refrain is written:
Let no heart grow narrow.
It was born wide as the welkin,
deep as the harvest,
tender enough
to hold the whole world.
Only I Decide My Fate
By Kathryn Collins and Terry O'Leary
At times when I am dark and deep
joy but flickering dim,
I upon the portal keep
stilled like phantom limb.
Braced by winter's welkin wind,
distant clouds unfold,
where once the roar of laughter dinned
I taste the burning cold.
Stood in life's predicament
immobile on the sill,
I wait for grand encouragement,
to warm this awful chill.
Stranded in the winter bleak,
with breezes bitter blown
slicing like the sleet oblique
I find myself alone
If frozen at the brink I stand,
persist in stagnant stall,
my feet will melt to silken sand.
gone my soul, my all.
Thanks to Kathy for her support and inspiration
At Otter Lake, whilst welkin starry clear,
A ghostly wail bruits eerily despair,
And eyes appear alit like embers near,
At Otter Lake.
Avaunt, the trappers pray, bedim thy glare;
In sooth, thy mourning grieves a bygone year,
From earthly bourn, ascend to angels care.
Arose a zephyr, thick as bloodied air,
And shrieking withered every soul with fear,
To where a man durst lay his footsteps there,
At Otter Lake.
I am blue : but not new
I am white : sometimes bright
I am red : and then delight
I am yellow : often mellow
I am marine : but not green
I am light : but not at night
I am black : when sun ,I lack
I am grey : who but I
Sees in , both night and day
BRIAN STRAND
It's the wind that scuttle
Had it not left me troubled?
Bewildered and peculiar am I
The strange looks of the sky
Rains by as the day sleeps the night
And welkin seems
It broke down a frail sigh
Thus, emitted a shrill cry
Shuns the daylight as clouds gather
Entwined with poetic strife
As lovely clouds converge to safeguard
I have thought...
When the wind come hitherto from afar
Only shall it present
...more mellow mars
Suddenly fallen have I
...the prolific wind scuttles
It's the wind that scuttle
Had it, left me yet troubled?
Bewildered and peculiar am I...
Nevertheless...
Eyes of tomorrow shall come to pass
And mind of sorrow fall short at last
I want to make much...of my soul
However...the wind which tarry hitherto stows me much troubles
In which I composed a frail sigh from
And even I...I emit a shrill cry, with a voice, saying...
"Goodbye. That I may change direction from mellow mars."
And now...brother and sisters. Behold...now I am free.
ALL OF ME
World's written with the fictions that one can't explain ,
The streams full of photonic dust leads to abodes in gain.
Empyreal deity embraces me ,
Episodic cuddlefests then braces me .
Bouts and animosities all obliterate ,
I do venditore the past but am not alone .
All the gayness , peace, pride hails ,
All the halcyon moments prevails .
Then murmuring the enchanting prays
I say ,
Its All Of Me ,
loving all of them .
And they are neither the fortune,
nor a diviner I am.
Its just feeling a halo ,
Walking forth a welkin ,
The feels are ephemeral
but it stays right here eternal .
As I see the zodiacal light
with all the horizon paint white.
Figured anelapsis with cool vibes .
As I say ,
Its All Of Me ,
loving all of them .
And that them,
is a supreme one.
The deity !
The God !
S•R•
@thatoneshe_
In Marked Territory 10-28-24 - Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
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In Marked Territory
Midnight tightly clasps the darkness,
Like a wounded heart,
In between topaz edges of twilight
And pastels of first light.
Jealous of its cosmos
Shoos away the master of the day
Turning the face of the daystar
To other skies
To claim small hours.
Guardian of vanishing infinities
Speaks
Indigo borders
For moonlight
Moonbows
And wishes on the first brave star
Where waves of the galaxy
Break
Over unseen edges of stellar sands.
Lit only by celestial lanterns
Enchanter
Conjures sovereign spells
Declaring jurisdiction over platinum roses
And
Lover’s sighs
That wax then wane under polar stars.
Night rules this welkin magic,
A sorcerer hiding a book of spells,
This realm under the starry arch
The moonrise
The nebulae decorating the firmament,
Where gravity hems in epiphanies.