Antique Loggers Poem by David Welch

It's a romanticized picture
hanging on my dining room wall,
1907 lumberjacks,
one perched atop lumber stacked tall.

It's winter, and they have a sled
pulled by two horses, looking bored,
twelve-foot pile of logs they pull,
one teamster with long reigns aboard.

It's somewhere in the wilderness,
the nothing of northern New York,
four men on foot stand alongside,
dressed in wool for cold winter work.

One holds an axe, that one looks young,
all wear bootpacks over their pants,
with hats and mustaches of old,
looks like a job for a real man.

The trees are dyed in sepia,
the colors are gradings of gray,
it's the type of nostalgia that
just takes a worried mind away.

Compared to typing on a screen
it seems quite appealing to me,
then I stop and remind myself
most of them never reached sixty…