Agee and Evans

I’m reading James Agee, but while I read
I’m seeing the marina where I worked one summer,
where, one morning, from some municipal program,
buses of Black and Puerto Rican kids arrive: ‘just take them
down on the docks to see the boats,’ and afterward,
as shouts and whistles herd them out
fast as a fire drill, one last kid
clanks down the office-trailer and hustles for the buses.
Chas who dates our boss Colleen is there laughing.
Chas who never seems to work – ‘his family’s
in government,’ keeps laughing. Someone says
the kid’s a thief. Chas caught him, and they held him down
and took turns spitting.
                                                 I know the someone is a ‘him’
and seems ‘like me,’ as in, will go to college.
But where his face was, scattering window glints.
...