Maya Zeff: California Poets Part 10, Three Poems

Maya Zeff

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Maya Zeff

Three Poems

isomorphism

have you heard the sound of leaves drying into ribbons under the midday sun?

the crackle of snapping shrimp underwater

sound transforms shape, arrow straight trunks sink and wave

bark ripples

air is thick clicking

bristling and primed

I am a fish out of forest

oaken gills and pinecone scales.

crow glides on the surface

soil is springboard,

dried coils leap from the surface like the fin-winged ones.

silence fills time like a flood and I breathe it in.

immanence

sweet rotting fruit

mauna unwrapping veil of mist — gods revealing themselves.

I eat carambola. I taste an island’s body, blur

any distinction between selves

between less and more dissolution with each bite.

sacrament, body, god, fractal fig tree and crevasses within ridgelines where clouds collect;

folded thighs.

timeless years waiting, until floods, slick obelisk, braided gloss thrown over a shoulder.

I never understood that whole catholic transubstantiation

scattering my haphazard skepticism like native seeds.

maybe I finally learned something, here.

sweet transmuting fruit

what can I give you that you don’t already have?

flowers, seeds, the ease of age, hollow where fires once beckoned change inside.

you burned, you died, you formed anew – what is left save rumbling tones

deeper than cassowary cries

for those quiet enough to hear.

sweet matter ascending

climbing to skyfather, winding up the way

dangerous trees and other absurdities

I hold the utmost respect for wind,

on howling evenings like this.

Silence! it screams, the irony going unnoticed.

I zigzag across my street avoiding death by palm frond.

palms are extremely dangerous, I tell my parents,

who have survived genocide and cancer.

palm trees kill more people each year than shark attacks!

they laugh.

why someone would choose to live underneath a giant capable of such destruction is beyond me.

it is absurd, yet absurdity reveals strange truths.

we surround ourselves with twisted hazards:

we paved over the soft earth, then molded and plushed our shoes to achieve the same effect.

absurd.

we poisoned the water, then bought it back in bottles, purified. absurd.

we built pools beside the ocean, we blocked the sun then swallowed vitamin D; absurd, absurd.

and yet!

annie dillard knew this:

if we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed.

in nature, improbabilities are the one stock trade. the whole creation is one lunatic

fringe.

so. I make peace with the palm fronds, those beautiful killers swaying overhead.

I suppose, I too am part of the lunatic fringe — soft animal, choosing danger,

walking home in the storm.

Author Bio:

Maya Zeff is a marine ecologist and environmental poet studying how global change reshapes species interactions in our oceans. An ocean translator, she weaves science and poetry to bring us closer to the natural world. Her work appears in The Offing and the Poets for Science anthology The Nature of Our Times (2025). When not writing or researching, she can usually be found several meters below sea level.