Buying Vinyl by Sheenagh Pugh

Buying Vinyl by Sheenagh Pugh, in Later Selected Poems 

Can be found on Amazon  

I was asking Cal about floor coverings

- I knew it was Cal because his cardboard badge

said Cal in black felt-tip. What I needed

was six metres of wood-effect vinyl

on a roll, and a good reason to fix

Cal's eyes with mine for a few moments

while I told him about it. They were brown,

far darker than the vinyl, forest-pool-effect.

I showed him what I wanted, and he nodded

and said “yes, right away” and spread

the stuff out on the floor and knelt down.

The back of his neck looked as untouched

as new snow. He glanced up under his eyebrows,

shy and said, “Do me a favour,

hold this still?” So I did, kneeling

beside him at the edge, pressing my hand

where his had been, while he laid

his long steel rile close to the roll

and cut. Clean, straight, beautiful.

I said, “You're good at that” and he smiled,

and I thought, You can't be more than seventeen.

He rolled it tight, not easy, the tip

of his tongue just showing, and I wanted

to help, but he hadn't asked, and I was meant

to be the customer, after all.

I'm three times your age. And he mastered it.

All tied up firmly. I was proud of him.

He puzzled for a moment, licked

the end of his biro, then wrote the bill.

“You pay them over there.” It was good value,

I thought, as I checked the VAT,

and he hadn't even charged for the smile.