The Shooting Star
Midnight splendor
Tell me cowboy,
what was your wish?
Stars shoot first
and ask questions later.
Virginie Colline is a French translator living in Paris. You can read her latest poems in
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*/Paniolo/*
He’s a paniolo
on a volcanic range
minding herds of cattle,
it’s really not so strange.
He’s a paniolo
on these, the lava lands.
He’s a paniolo
far from the beach’s sands.
His ranch is quite ancient
from ‘fore the Texasrange;
from eighteen nine ’til now
there’s been so little change.
His ranch is very large…
puts other spreads to shame;
multi-thousand acres
brings paniolo fame.
His ranch is furtherest west,
and off the continent,
three-thousand miles away
on an isle of content.
There on the mount’nous slopes,
his herds of cattle roam.
He’s a paniolo;
Hawaiiis his home.
Aloha paniolo
on the lava lands.
Aloha, paniolo
Clark Crouch is an American poet who has been featured in our journal family on numerous occasions and responded to our last December 2012 Issue with this poem and note-
“I appreciated your poem. It brought back recollections of my visit to the Parker Ranch on the Big Island a few years ago. It sorta lays Texas to rest on the biggest, the best, etc….all grown up from 9 cows left there by Vancouver. Aided by Mexican vaqueros, Parker was hired to bring the resulting herd under control. The resulting cowboys, Paniolos, still ride in Hawaii. My own poem was written there and given to the Parker Ranch to use as they saw fit.”
Photo is property of Elizabeth Akin Stelling, and taken on her quest to find the legendary Hawaiian cowboys of Parker Ranch on the big island, and she did! The cowboy she acquainted herself had just returned from riding and roping off the ranch. Down below is the Pololu Valley Forest Reserve, where they say wild horses still run.
