When I was in the service, I was a news reporter for the army.
And among other idiotic things that I had to do,
I had to cover the atom bomb test in Nevada in 1954.
And this is a poem about that business.
We had to go out in trenches about a mile
or so from ground zero where the bomb was to go off
and crouch in the bottom.
And we were instructed to cover our eyes with our hands
until the flash had gone off and the shockwave had passed over.
And I did this.
I was in the bottom of the trench
the first time I went out.
And I covered my eyes with my hands.
And I could see the bones in my fingers
when the flash went off.
And I've always been a rather curious fellow.
You could take that two ways, I guess.
And so I got up to see what was going on
and the shockwave hit me.
[LAUGHTER]
And I was almost the first casualty of the atomic age.
And this is a poem about that business
and about another business when I was very young,
and I fell out of a second story window into a sandbox.
And somehow another miraculously escaped.
And I kind of put these two instances together
and made this poem.
I call the poem "Zimmer Falling Through a Tree
into the Atomic Age."
Ohio, 1944, Nevada, 1954.
"Once I fell through a tree like the bomb knocked me later,
ass over elbows, leaning from an upper window,
I was flattered that the leaves beckoned
to me as though I was the sun.
And I fell out, smashing through the branches, landing
in my sandbox.
As later, I stood in the trench to see the fireball rise
and was slammed by the shockwave into reality,
my head flew in all directions like a ripe dandelion.
My teeth seemed pulverized.
But it was only the sand in my mouth.
I was alive and whole.
Thus, I, Zimmer, went down twice, hard but unharmed,
early in the atomic age.
And I will survive."