The Echelon

The Echelon
No wing flies alone By Jawad Yousofi. For the skies, open wide enough for every wing, that invite the birds to show us the way. A single bird at the edge of the water. The sky is wide. Too wide for one. One lifts. Then another. And the sky begins to remember a shape. No one draws it. No one commands it. Yet the shape appears, as if the sky had always known it. Every wing stirs the air into a gift for the one behind. I lift you without turning around. You rise on what I give, and never have to ask. The one behind cannot see the way. It only trusts the wing in front, and the wing in front trusts the sky. The one in front meets the wind first. When the front grows heavy, it drifts back and rests on the lift of others. Another rises to meet the wind. The front belongs to everyone. Night comes. The ground disappears. No one knows every mile ahead, only the one beside them. It is enough. Rivers pass. Borders pass. No bird asks whose sky this is. Far below, someone stops. A child points. A stranger looks up from a hurried day. The flock never knows. They were only carrying each other home, and the sky was more beautiful for it. At dusk, the water. One by one they come down, wings open, softly together. No one arrives first. They all arrive. Somewhere, someone is lifting you without turning around. And somewhere, without knowing it, you are lifting someone too. No wing flies alone.