A well-versed romance

You might think there's nothing more romantic than two divorced people, over 50 and head over heels in love. Wrong. It's even more romantic when both those amorous individuals are poets.

On a Saturday in October, at the North Sea Poetry Scene's annual fundraising dinner dance in Patchogue, Tom Stock, 70, of Manorville asked for Nancy Keating's phone number.

Keating, 56, of Babylon ignored the request. She did write her contact information on the back of a business card, but she gave it to a female poet friend.

It was Stock's good fortune that this card fell to the floor. He's a neatnik, so he picked up the scrap of paper and put it in his pocket.

Keating had noticed Stock's good looks and his dashing chocolate-brown fedora. She raised an arm and beckoned him onto the dance floor.

"It was something that you could do a passable Lindy to," Keating said. "I was very impressed that he knew how to dance. . . . Tom had thrown his hat into the ring with a flourish." Later, he walked her to her car and kissed her good night.

That night, "Her face said it all," Stock recalled. "She was thinking, 'He's deeply eccentric,' " a phrase she now uses affectionately to describe him.

Fifteen minutes later, as Stock drove east and she headed west, he found the card in his pocket. He forgot that he'd put it there himself, by his account, and thought with a thrill that "she slipped it into my pocket" after all. He called her.

Keating, who doesn't miss much, had seen him put the card into his pocket. He knew it was hers, she suspected.

She didn't call him back until Monday. On their first date, Stock said, "I asked her to get married." Keating retorted, "Let's wait a year." Soon, they were talking until 2 a.m. (As it happens, I know Stock, and I know that he was used to retiring at about 9 p.m.)

On New Year's Eve, Stock dropped to one knee, proffered an estate diamond and asked for Keating's hand. The next day, poets at a Walt Whitman House reading burst into applause at the news. The date is set for Oct. 17.

Stock is an iffy speller who likes to cook. Keating, a persnickety speller and a stickler for punctuation, doesn't cook. She is showing him how to shop, and Stock, who taught science in Middle Country middle schools for 32 years, teaches her Earth sciences.

Stock, usually impatient and impetuous, listens patiently to explanations about knitting. Her house is an 1858 Victorian with Delft blue shutters.

His, an acre and a meadow in the Pine Barrens, is rustic, with tree trunks forming a homemade bed. Stock wears his heart on his sleeve. Keating, who has a journalism degree, is more reserved. He can be manic, and she's merely energetic.

Each tolerates these differences in the name of love.

"She's irreverent, and so am I," Stock said.

In his time, Stock has been a puppeteer, paper maker, naturalist, outsider artist and more. Keating goes to a day job as resource adviser for the Suffolk County executive's Office of Women's Services and previously worked in marketing at The Wall Street Journal.

For Keating, Stock wrote a poem called "I Am Not Your Practice Man." In return, she wrote "Practice," which includes these lines:

 . . . Lord knows, my sweetie,

I could use the practice.

Embarrassing, how long it's been.

My kitchen shows it:

a woman gone feral,

foraging at fast-food counters,

grazing at fundraisers.

Clueless me, trying to attract a man

with a condiment-fridge . . .

May I practice on you?

 Keating's new book of poems is called "Always Looking Back" (Pangaea Publishing, St. Paul, Minn., $10.95). Now, she faces forward with Stock.

"I want to be the knitting needles," Stock said as Keating knitted. "It's hard to snuggle when she's knitting."