The Frozen Logger

Cisco Houston

As I set down one evening in a timber town cafe

A six foot-seven waitress, to me these words did say

"I see you are a logger and not a common bum

For no one but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb



"My lover was a logger, there's none like him today

If you'd sprinkle whisky on it, he'd eat a bale of hay

He never shaved the whiskers from off his horny hide

But he'd pound 'em in with a hammer, then bite 'em off inside



"My lover came to see me one freezing winter day

He held me in a fond embrace that broke three vertebrae

He kissed me when we parted so hard it broke my jaw

And I could not speak to tell him he'd forgot his mackinaw



"I watched my logger lover going through the snow

A-sauntering gaily homeward at forty eight below

The weather tried to freeze him, it tried it's level best

At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest



"It froze clean down to China, it froze to the stars above

At one thousand degrees below zero it froze my logger love

They tried in vain to thaw him and if you'll believe me, sir

They made him into ax blades to chop the Douglas fir



"That's how I lost my lover and to this caffay I come

And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb

And then I tell my story of my love they could not thaw

Who kissed me when we parted so hard he broke my jaw"