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 the jihadist teenager,

with kitchen knife in hand,
to hoist his triangular sail.