WEBVTT

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When I was in the service, I was
a news reporter for the army.

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And among other idiotic
things that I had to do,

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I had to cover the atom
bomb test in Nevada in 1954.

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And this is a poem
about that business.

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We had to go out in
trenches about a mile

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or so from ground zero
where the bomb was to go off

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and crouch in the bottom.

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And we were instructed to
cover our eyes with our hands

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until the flash had gone off and
the shockwave had passed over.

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And I did this.

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I was in the bottom
of the trench

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the first time I went out.

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And I covered my
eyes with my hands.

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And I could see the
bones in my fingers

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when the flash went off.

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And I've always been a
rather curious fellow.

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You could take that
two ways, I guess.

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And so I got up to
see what was going on

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and the shockwave hit me.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I was almost the first
casualty of the atomic age.

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And this is a poem
about that business

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and about another business
when I was very young,

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and I fell out of a second
story window into a sandbox.

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And somehow another
miraculously escaped.

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And I kind of put these
two instances together

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and made this poem.

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I call the poem "Zimmer
Falling Through a Tree

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into the Atomic Age."

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Ohio, 1944, Nevada, 1954.

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"Once I fell through a tree
like the bomb knocked me later,

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ass over elbows, leaning
from an upper window,

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I was flattered that
the leaves beckoned

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to me as though I was the sun.

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And I fell out, smashing
through the branches, landing

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in my sandbox.

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As later, I stood in the
trench to see the fireball rise

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and was slammed by the
shockwave into reality,

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my head flew in all directions
like a ripe dandelion.

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My teeth seemed pulverized.

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But it was only the
sand in my mouth.

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I was alive and whole.

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Thus, I, Zimmer, went down
twice, hard but unharmed,

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early in the atomic age.

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And I will survive."

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