• Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey
• Scrambled eggs and whiskey
• in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
• a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
• but sweet. Sometimes. And
• weren’t we fine tonight?
• When Hank set up that limping
• treble roll behind me
• my horn just growled and I
• thought my heart would burst.
• And Brad M. pressing with the
• soft stick and Joe-Anne
• singing low. Here we are now
• in the White Tower, leaning
• on one another, too tired
• to go home. But don’t say a word,
• don’t tell a soul, they wouldn’t
• understand, they couldn’t, never
• in a million years, how fine,
• how magnificent we were
• in that old club tonight.

• February Morning
• The old man takes a nap
• too soon in the morning.
• His coffee cup grows cold.

• Outside the snow falls fast.
• He’ll not go out today.
• Others must clear the way

• to the car and the shed.
• Open upon his lap
• lie the poems of Mr. Frost.

• Somehow his eyes get lost
• in the words and the snow,
• somehow they go

• backward against the words,
• upward among the flakes
• to the blankness of air,

• the busy abundance there.
• Should he take warning?
• Mr. Frost went off, they say,

• in bitterness and despair.
• The old man stirs and wakes,
• hearing the hungry birds,

• nuthatch, sparrow, and jay
• that clamor outside, unfed,
• and words stir from his past

• like this irritable sorrow
• of jay, nuthatch, and sparrow,
• wrath which no longer takes

• shape of sentence or song.
• He climbs the stairs to bed.
• The snow falls all day long. 

Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) was an American poet and literary critic. The son of a journalist, Carruth’s interest in the written word — especially poetry — began early in his life. He wrote more than 30 books of poetry and two poetry anthologies, including The Voice That Is Great Within Us, a comprehensive collection of modern poets. He served as editor-in-chief of Poetry from 1949 to 1950. In 1996, he won the National Book Award for his collection of verse, Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey. His wide-ranging knowledge of poetry, jazz, and blues is reflected in the range of styles in which he composed. Like his friends and fellow poets, Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) and Donald Hall (1928-2018), Carruth often drew his imagery from the rural New England setting in which he lived.