Big Bang Memory (Version 2) Poem by Kim Barney

For the last few days I have been thinking
about that day some fifty years ago
that I was careless and half-destroyed my hand.

I tell people it was firecrackers but
it was really a little glass bottle
partly filled with firecracker powder.

We frightened the maid with dud firecrackers
from which we had removed the powder.

Tried to detonate the bottle with a
makeshift fuse but with no success, and so...

Finally went to dump the powder out
but it decided to explode instead.

I had been squatting on my haunches when
I picked up the bottle, yet after the
blast I found myself standing back about a
dozen feet. I still don't understand how.

Ears ringing, totally dazed, bewildered.
Can hear water running. I think there is
a tap I must turn off. I look around
for the tap. There is none. It is just blood
gushing from my hand, hitting the sidewalk.

In horror I notice my hand for the
first time. It's all crumpled, most of the flesh
torn from the bone of the index finger.

The hand was numb; I felt no pain.That would
come later. And now my brain began to
be numb as well. I could not think at all,
except I knew that I must stop the blood.

We had no phone, no taxis were nearby.
My roommate flagged a car down in the street.
How many passed on by before one stopped
I do not know, but thankfully one did.

Arriving at the hospital, we were
shocked to hear them say, We have no doctors
here right now. Take him somewhere else. There's a
hospital on the other side of town.

There, too, there is a delay. They debate
on whether to take me or not. At last
They wheel me into surgery. I sleep.

God moves, they say, in mysterious ways.
He could have prevented that explosion
but chose not to, for that is not His way.
My whole life was changed, but so were others.

Some good things happened because of people
I met visiting my plastic surgeon.

There are also other advantages:
I only have to clip eight fingernails.