November Ekphrastic Challenge: Day 13

For Paul Brookes’ November challenge, today’s painting inspiration is patriotten by Marcel Herms

Crowdspawning

A crowd is not,
not like frogspawn or bee larvae,
elvers or gnats.
A crowd is people,
an agglutination of minds, thoughts, desires.
a crowd is individuals
with unique destinies,
sharing for a moment the same path.
A crowd is people,
eyes, tongues working,
wired up each to a different brain.

But sometimes, a crowd is not people
or even frogspawn,
it is a thing of cells, sharing the same desires,
of thoughts wired to a single brain,
eyes, mouths, tongues working blind and mute.

And then we,
who are not of the crowd,
are afraid.