Tengu

Wind came off the ridge with a beak in it. A tengu stood on the high Japanese stone, long nose or crow face, wings, the mountain spirit that does not come down to be named. People who climbed that far spoke less on the way back. They carried a tengu gift of the thin air. It returns in tengu playing cards that feel like a draft across the hand, in a tengu notebook opened only on a high page, in a tengu postcard of the wing and the long face. The ridge goes quiet. The watch does not.