What really stood out

When flipping through "Retellings" there were many things that caught my eye. One that stood out above the rest was on page 885 and was titled "Ballad of Birmingham Bombing of a Church". This poem really took hold of my emotions when I was reading it. It is about a child who is practically begging his mother to allow him to go downtown to march in the Freedom Parade that is happening that day. His mother seems to be pretty protective of him and would rather her son go to church to pray for all of the people who are in the march and that they may be safe. As his mother wishes, he goes to the church to pray only to be bombarded with bombs and is, in my interpretation, killed. After hearing the noises of the bombs going off, the mother begins wailing, tears falling from her face. She runs into the streets calling for her child. When she gets to the church the mother finds one of her son's shoes in the rubble. The last two lines of the poem read, "O here's the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?" This poem really hit me with that last sentence. It just proved how fragile life really is, that you could go to where you think is the safest, and be blindsided and taken by death.