Javascript is either disabled or not supported by this browser. This page may not appear properly.
                                        Paul Gauguin. Fatata te Miti (1892)



                              Pitcairn McCoy prospers as he is,
                              chief magistrate in callused naked feet,
                              re-directing fire-encumbered ship
                              toward Mangareva and its bed of blue lagoon.
                              Soft-spoken as a liberating breeze,
                              he explains, "You can do nothing  here" 
                              at Pitcairn Island. "There is no beach."

                              Exhaustion is evident in every movement
                              and Mangareva distant three hundred miles
                              where Honorable McCoy needs no shoes to pilot them.

                              Hot boards of inward-burning vessel
                              register on knowing soles
                              the sorry state
                              of mankind over-taxed with too much present age,
                              too little of the unshod age to come.
                              McCoy's gentle mind compassionates
                              a burning dispensation,
                              struggling with its underlying hell
                              below the torrid deck. 
Lavinia's Morning
Poems by John Pilkey
Mangareva
The White Company
                            Paul Gauguin. The White Horse (1898)

                              We latter-day McCoy's seed,
                              responsive to the turning face of God,
                              will also pilot half mankind
                              to find their predetermined bed of rest
                              when barefoot honor comes to us.


                         John Davis Pilkey