come late in life, having grown up 
in the flatlands of Florida and Georgia 
where all talk was of tide and limestone aquafers.
What I’ve now learned of river basins
are how slope, flow and precipitation move 
boulders, wear them down into pebbles 
tumbled by clay-laden motion. 
Unseen topography funnels melt-off
from the Appalachians, water trickling in all
directions named only on certain maps 
I’ve never seen until mid-life,
an entire understanding of green-blue force 
and gravity with descriptors all their own, 
as if a kept secret, a parallel universe
made of tributaries on pink and orange color-
coded watershed maps without cities 
etched in black ink.      You may say: 
they’ve always been there, lady,
what we’ve known all along.
But I am thankful for my unknowing, 
an overdue flint to abolish my unwarranted 
shame from misunderstanding the other
invisible force, a counter-balance to the new-old 
antisemitism pulling all down
hill, allowing my jihadist neighbor next door,
with kitchen knife in hand,
to hoist his triangular sail.