I think Piper has an injury to his white eye. There’s lots of gunk underneath, which I keep cleaning away, even though there’s no cut visible. There’s also a little dirty patch on the edge of his white ear (same side), which I suspect is a small injury too. Piper is clearly a menace to society with his hard-drinking, roustabouting, bar-brawling ways.

Since I’m awake anyway, a poem. Amphibrachic tetrameter because I can.

Country Road Meeting

An Anglian roadway in whistling November.
No sign of the taxi; no signal, no money,
A cardie from Primark ‘tween her and the weather,
Suspecting she’ll come to regret the stilettos.
Some headlights: the taxi? She moves to the hedgerow
And hopes she’ll be visible. Funny, no engine.

It comes round the corner; she shivers. What is it?
It looks like a calf but it’s burly and shaggy
And looking at her with those luminous eyeballs!
Its claws make no clicking, no noise on the roadway;
No steam from its muzzle. It’s not even breathing.
“If this is a pisstake,” she mumbles, “it’s working.”

It passes her swiftly, the muscular creature,
So close she could touch it. You’re kidding. She doesn’t.
Intent on its business, it wholly ignores her.
A roar from behind makes her jump. A Fiesta
With spoiler and skirts and a strip light beneath it.
A hundred and fifty or more, never slowing,
It bombs down the roadway, so close it could touch her.

The dog—was it hit? Where’s it gone? Shit, she’s blinded.
She rubs at the afterglow, loses a contact.
The car’s disappeared and, it seems, so’s the creature.
No body. No impact. No blood. Must have dodged it.
Her sobs become mist as she turns and examines
The tracks of the tyres in the place she was walking.

A few minutes later, the cab driver finds her.