Tom Stock

Poet, Essayist, Photographer, Naturalist

Category: Poetry

Archeology of A Telephone Booth

By

On April 19, 2016

In Poetry

Hinge yourself into a Bell Telephone booth
Screech the folding door shut
Reach for change

Lay coins on stainless steel shelf
A metal to metal silvery sound
Check the coin return

Pick up receiver and insert coins
Hear them jingle
Then drop into the box

Read taxi ads, graffiti messages, smell urine
Check out the directory with pages ripped out
Phone numbers scratched on plexiglass

The dial tone
Listen to the zip zip zip of the rotary dial
Glance at the person outside
Waiting to make their call

Busy tones and the hang up click
Coins drop into the coin return
Index finger scoop

Hear the siren of a passing police car
Corner of Walnut and Main
Anywhere, USA

East Creek

By

On April 13, 2016

In Poetry, Sampawams Creek

On Sampawams Creek, work boats
Known as garveys,
A type of boat with flat decks fore and aft,
Built for clam diggers to stand and work
With long tongs to grab the bay bottom
To hoist and spill the contents
Hard shell clams that clunk the deck
As open tongs release quahogs.
Washed, sorted, baged,
This is real work, hard work, good work
As long as the clams are there

Work Creek, Sampawams Creek now,.
There are only a few clam boats left,
Now mostly fiberglass pleasure boats

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Song

By

On March 28, 2016

In Poetry

SONG

stiff, green needles

vibrate in pitch

with the wind

song of the pine barrens

 

debrief and context:

This short poem/song is the result of a hike in Brookhaven State Park with Mark Harrington, my hiking companion. We stopped to rest and listen to the hum of wind in pitch pine needles in the forest canopy. I sent Mark a report of our walk. He responded by extracting the above. I revised it slightly.  Every species of pine tree have a different “song.” Pitch pine needles are stiff and vibrate in wind at a different frequency than white pines’ needles. White pine needles are softer and the listener can tell. Extrapolating this idea,  every place has it’s unique “song” . Attunement to sounds in nature comes with listening. “How I Go ToThe Woods, a poem by Mary Oliver “Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone.” Those who wear Earbuds and head phone sets in the woods will not hear the subtle “Song of the Pine Barrens”

Tom Stock March 28, ’16

The No Manifesto

By

On March 27, 2016

In Poetry, Rants

We trees have spoken. No,no,no. No.
We will stand together as a vibrant
community against our destruction.
No, we will not be replaced with 67,000
solar panels for electricity so more
people in more houses can use more. No to
the destruction of our soil, litter layer,
herb layer, shrub layer, and forest
canopy. We use sunshine our way. No to
chainsaws and woodchippers. No to the
slogun “clean energy”. We are clean
energy. We are sustainable. We are shade,
we are home to chipmunk, fox, owl. We are
oxygen. No to row upon row of panels. Yes
to energy conservation. Yes to lower
population densities. No. No no no no.we are
the cycles and food webs and food chains
that we are. No to wanton destruction of
habitat to provide useless outdoor safety
lights, no to Christmas lights, no to
electric silliness, stupid over consumption,
stupid waste, leave the forest as is. Solar
energy destroys forests. Put your panels
someplace else.

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