Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Cobble Falafel

Is there any temperature better than a sunny 70 degrees? Not for me. I ate my lunch in Cobble Hill Park today, the sparrows and pigeons crumbing at my feet. Honeybees were working the round red flower heads of ornamental onions. I think this is the first time this year I’ve seen honeybees in the neighborhood. There’s a hive or two on a nearby Henry St roof from what I understand. A lone crow flapped south. One crow, as you know from your ornithomancy, is bad luck. I had a falafel from Damascus Bakery on Atlantic, where the house hottie makes ’em special for me, or so I like to think. She adds pickles and pickled red cabbage, unexpected tastes, and colors, for the cabbage stains the pita pink. Unfortunately, the chickpea nuggets are not fried to order, meaning the sandwich lacks the essential mix of hot crispness and creamy coolness. This keeps DB’s pocket sammy just outside the gates of falafel heaven. Still, I was happy, even without a second crow.

2 comments:

Gerry Gomez Pearlberg said...

You rightly celebrate 70 degrees in May--what poet Gerald Stern so aptly describes as "the temperature of the whole galaxy". Here's the poem, which I have posted on my fridge:

"Cow Worship"
by Gerald Stern

I love the cows best when they are a few feet away
from my dining-room window and my pine floor,
when they reach in to kiss me with their wet
mouths and their white noses.
I love them when they walk over the garbage cans
and across the cellar doors,
over the sidewalk and through the metal chairs
and the birdseed.
---Let me reach out through the thin curtains
and feel the warm air of May.
It is the temperature of the whole galaxy,
all the bright clouds and clusters,
beasts and heroes,
glittering singers and isolated thinkers
at pasture.

Matthew said...

amen