It always picks the thinnest branch and keeps jumping. It seems that a person with frozen feet is stamping his feet, as if every twig that has just fallen is not what he is looking for. It's jumping around, always looking for it, and I don't know what's missing.
It doesn't know how tired it is.
Except jumping. Its tail is always up and down. Seemingly proud, it is actually maintaining balance.
It often flies away with a poof for no reason. Suddenly flew back for no reason. It's just not the one that flew back. I don't know. They look exactly alike, just like replicas.
When they fly from tree to tree, they look very cute. It's a ball with several ups and downs in the middle. It seems that it's not flying, but something thrown in the past-a group of wiped paper or a group of dirty cotton wool.
Without slapping little wings a few times in the middle, he fell down, like a mass of thrown things suddenly thrown high on the landing arc, and it saved himself.
It can't fly. It won't hover, nor will it catch the airflow like those big birds, and go straight up and down between the white clouds and the sky for a big overlook or a big voyage. It is a realist, from one tree to another, from one roof to another, living with people, between streets, busy without shame, mediocre without inferiority.
It is so small that it falls on a branch, which is the black spot of myopia. It can't even read commas or periods. It flies low, jumps, pecks, combs its feathers, makes eternal children's voices, is patient or cheerful in the change of seasons, pursues mating, incubates eggs responsibly ... and lives.
It is a living punctuation dotted in the process of human life: when winter falls on dead branches, it is a comma; When it falls on the wall, it is a full stop; When several birds fall on the wire together, it is an ellipsis ... A courtship couple is chasing after each other, and when they are tired, they fall on the upper and lower branches. This is a semicolon.
Closest to people's lives, but keep your distance.
People often get hurt, but they never fly away and never give up the convenience of being close to others, so they never become extinct.
They are called sparrows. I wonder if they also think each other is a "sparrow"
Look, a comma on the branch flies away.
Poof, another one flew away.
(Selected from Zhou Tao's Prose, Volume II, Shanghai Oriental Publishing Center, 1998 edition)