Winter in Minnesota

Forty seven next November. He’s almost as over
as Hubert Humphrey’s White House hopes.
Never imagined he’d have to winter back in Minnesota,
be there standing on his mother’s front lawn,
like a distant cousin in a photograph no-one remembers taking.
The Dylan Thomas of Minneapolis; got so caught
up with mythmaking and pool-hall brawls,
twenty five years later he isn’t even Garrison Keillor;
will settle for the woman, who’ll aid and abet him
through the next bottle of whiskey, and maybe
tend the grass, the daisies when he’s done.