Melanie Stoff Maier was born and raised in San Francisco.  She earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.  She practiced in San Francisco and Marin County before retiring to write poetry. 

Melanie’s poetry has been published in reviews such as The Fourth River, Phoebe, The Southern California Review, and South Carolina Review. Internationally her work has appeared in Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, Poland. Her first chapbook, The Land of Us, was published by Pudding House Press. She is the author of two other chapbooks, Scattering Wind and Night Boats; two full-length books of poems sticking to earth; Invention of the Moon; and co-editor and contributor to the anthology Chapter & Verse: Poems of Jewish Identity, all from Conflux Press. Her poems are inspired by current and historical events, travel, and daily life.

Botswana

Noise awakens us – a huge
shaking. I imagine lions comi
through our camp dragging their kill.
Nothing is visible in the moonlight.
At breakfast talk is of an "ele"
who stripped the palm trees
behind our tents. We find
pungent mounds of dung.

Along the river herds of elephants
hurry from bush to water.
Adolescent males jockey for position.
Others roll in the terra cotta mud.
In Savuti there are only males.
Here a river just disappeared, now
man made pipes fill watering holes.
Giraffe wait for a few bulls

in no hurry to finish drinking.
They become immobile -- one, two
with their trunks resting on a tusk.
Some sleep heads down, trunks hanging.
In Marin my life continues unchanged.
The answering machine flashes numbers,
mail piles up. Each day I drive
places pursuing the nameless.

Safe at home, I begin to be afraid.

-from sticking to earth