Romantics love semantics
They find glamour in grammar
Compare herbs with verbs
And gowns with nouns
While snowy streets
Remind them of Keats
And a fading glow
Is a background for Poe
They hum the blues
Reading Langston Hughes
And wait for a comet
To compare with a sonnet
Romantics love semantics
And shed a tear
When they read King Lear
Ted Goodell
January 30, 2021
They come at night
Under the Light of the Stars
Their dog like faces
Masked as if they were bandits
Stalking my yard for food
They are a perfection of animal
High in the evolutionary plan
Not dog or cat
Can bring a curiosity
That takes them past
My barrier of fence and stone
My yard a world
They study with a mason’s plan
And what they do not understand
They rearrange with agile hands
They stack my bricks
With architectural design
Concealed in shadows
That only the morning
Light defines
Ted Goodell
September 22, 2020
A poem writes itself
Like a spider
Spinning a web
It silently finds its prey
In the subtlety
Of hidden space
As if the tapestry of thought
Had finally trapped
The power of a single word
A trap waiting
For a feast of words
Ted Goodell
July 2020
An unexpected event has
Derailed our lives
Routines once taken for granted
Are re-ordered around staying at home
Investing space with every inch
As precious as hope
For out of necessity I exercise
Walking around the floor space
Of the kitchen table
The space is barely satisfactory
But less is far better
Than the dragging lethargy
Of prolonged confinement
Prolonged until prayer or science
And probably both
Measure each precious moment
Until the tools of survival
And the daily effort to end the confinement
Keep us in the safety of our homes
The gravity of the confinement
Assumed a strange cloistered feeling
As I chanced to look out the kitchen window
I saw a Morning Dove
Flaunting its freedom in flight
Aloft in the wind and in the sky
Ted Goodell
July 2020
I think about
Those empty houses
Seen as numbers
Lined along the streets
Their windows closed
Where children used to sleep
Their driveways
Once a playground
For their lively feet
They stand like markers
To the wind and grass
Like lonely sentinels
They watch
Each generation pass
Ted Goodell
May 2020
Historians and biblical scholars
Yearn to know the true location
Of the Garden of Eden
Not seeing that they stand
In the Earth of the Garden of Eden
Bounded by scholarly conjecture
Mixed with the mystique
Of ancient sentiment
While biblical sleuths shun
The idea that the Garden of Eden
Has always been our verdant planet Earth
Rich in vegetation and water
Rich in the multiplicity
Of generational creatures
Surrounded by a solar universe
Teeming with lifeless planets
Bereft of any biblical Edens
Orbiting in eternal desolation
Awaiting the fragile destiny of Eden Earth
Ted Goodell
May 2020
Some of the rules
Are designed
To limit the ruler
And some of the rules
Are designed to rule the ruler
And some of the rules
Are designed
So the ruler
Can rule like a ruler
But when the rules
Are ruled by the ruler
The ruler becomes the rules
Ted Goodell
March 2020
Like a majestic pantomime
The ballet dancers
Move with the graceful force of flowing water
And then like an athletic event
Focused like any sport
The dancers use their muscle power
To leap and sail
Like wingless engines soaring in space
The audience now entranced
By the dancers’ weightless force
Propelled beyond conceivable agility
They come to understand
How the ballet dancers
Epitomize the capacity
Of the human body
To triumph silently
Ted Goodell
February 18, 2020
I think that a poet
Long ago reflected
On the date 1-1-1010
And in that quiet moment
Of inner awareness
Knew that someday far away
One thousand and ten years away
Another poet would pause to reflect
On that fleeting day 2-2-2020
And react to the alignment
The inevitable alignment
of 2-2-2020
And ponder the dependability of days
Knowing that somewhere
In another thousand years
A future poet would think
How unretreating time moves on
And in the silent interval of years
The faithful calendar would show
3-3-3030
Ted Goodell
2-2-20
In the beginning
Man is ordered
To exert his strength
And bring sweat to his face
In his effort to make bread
The order has nothing to do
With physical beautification
But in time
Pushing the wheelbarrow
Was replaced with pumping iron
And working the bench press
And driving the stationary bike
And all of this exertion
Brought sweat to his face
But the bread was baked and packaged
Long before the gym doors opened
And the sweat derived by the harvest
Raises the machine to biblical obedience
Ted Goodell
January 2020
How did the peach
Get into impeachment
Is it the favorite fruit
Of the im and the ment
Why is the peach
Even necessary when
Imment is a perfect word without a fruit
Can it be that
The pear is already in a word
And the apple
Rose up with a mountain
And the grape
Brought fame to a novel
Perhaps the Founding Fathers
Could not refrain
From expressing
A peach of an idea
Ted Goodell
June 18, 2019
A roll of toilet paper
Begins as a fully formed commodity
It is first seen in its full paper power
Stylistically and securely wound
Yard after yard like a sacred scroll
Layer upon layer surrounding a tube
It is softly ornamental
But its practical objective is indisputable
It contends with no rivals
For it has no rivals
Nor can it be rejected
When summoned to a throne
It has no vanity
Though its popularity is unsurpassed
It carries its silent secrets
Far from probing eyes
As it travels with fluid speed
Below the structures
Holding up the universal throne.
Ted Goodell
June 3, 2019
Cartoons are like
An animated Rorschach test
Their unique configurations
Activate the imagination
Giving us the space
To think with the freedom
Rendered by the cartoon artist
They are a safe escape
As technicolor waves
Rock us softly
In the interior night
Of a movie matinee
Ted Goodell
May 28, 2019
There is an old sporting event
Called the “Runs”
The participant engaged in this sport
Suddenly and with no prior training
Becomes an elite athlete
Resembling a Jesse Owens
Or a Doberman Pincher
A classic sprinter who obeys
Nothing but the explosion
Of the starter pistol
Who quickly displays skills
That make an Olympic champion
Look like a jogger
This event can take place
In the participant’s home
But it is optically spectacular
In a Wal-Mart parking lot
Dodging cars and hurdles of shopping carts
Unlike the safety of the Olympics
There is no celebrating gold medal
Only the lonely victory
And the silent satisfaction
Of a paper reward
Praised by the cheering
Flush at the finish line.
Ted Goodell
April 11, 2019
What eternity of time
Travels this tiny insect
To the unknown world of porcelain bowl
Trapped traveler long lost
In Paleozoic memories
Its fluttering message
Speaks as if we understood
The inexpressible union
Between evolutionary rivals.
Ted Goodell
March 20, 2019
Is It Saturday or Sunday 