Like Charlie Russell before him, cowboy poet Mike Logan seeks to paint the Western way of life he loves before it's gone.

Logan's "pictures" flow from stories, words and rhythms delivered in his rich, deep, musical voice.

As he leans forward in his leather chair -- surrounded by cowboy photos and bronzes in his west side Helena living room -- it's easy to see him hunkered down on a tree stump before a blazing fire, spinning poems and yarns at the end of day.

Logan, a retired high school teacher, came to

writing cowboy poetry by accident.

He was passing through Avon at dusk, when he stopped to photograph a woman on a hay rake driving a team of work horses.

He always keeps an eye out for ranchers using work horses, he says. They stir pleasant memories of his granddad and father.

"I remembered my granddad plowing with the big teams," he recalls. His grandpa was a cattle man, his father a horse trainer for harness racing.

In the coming months, Logan would become fast friends with the horse-drivin' woman, Pauline Benson, and her family.

He produced a photographic book with verse, "Ranchin' Is ...," a portrait of the Benson ranch.

Sometime later, cowboys started to ask him to say some of their favorite poems of his while they were branding, such as "Ol Cooky" or "Bronc to Breakfast."

Word of his poems spread, and he was soon saying them at livestock dinners and then later at the National Cowboy Gathering in Elko, Nev.

In 2006 he was named Male Cowboy Poet of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists.

The Library of Congress chose his book and video -- "Montana Is ..." to represent Montana in the Library of Congress's Bicentennial Celebration in May 2000.

"I just did it (poetry) because it was fun. I never took photos to do a book. I never wrote the poems to do a book.

"I'm not a real cowboy," he adds. "I just grew up around horses."

However, cowboys tell him he can put into words what they're feeling and thinking better than they can.

Growing up in rural Coffeeville, Kan., Logan feels at home, he says, with the rural, ranching people that are at the heart of his poetry.

"Ranching is as close to the lifestyle I can remember as what we valued in growing up -- the father and kids worked together and played together.

"To me it's a life that should be valued ... small town life, farming and fishing."

The poem topics come easily, he says. "A lot come from Charlie Russell's paintings," such as "Bronc to Breakfast," "Laugh Kills Lonesome" and "When Horses Talk War There's Small Chance of Peace."

But it's the polishing of them for just the right word that takes a lot of time.

"Mine's all rhymed and metered. But the hardest thing is the meter. It's almost like it's the hoofbeats in the cowboy poetry."

Fellow cowboy poets, such as Wally McRae, praise Logan's skill.

"Mike is a bit embarassed when he is referred to as a cowboy poet because he doesn't follow a cow around for a living. The Western landscape is overflowing with folks who, although they may (or may not) be top hand, wouldn't know an iamb from an anapest if they had one on the end of a thirty-foot lariat," writes McRae.

"Mike knows. His meter is as tight as the top wire on a new bull pasture fence. His rhyme is not only on target but a bull's-eye every time. In addition to all this, he is a master storyteller."

"The ones that are his most poignant," he says, "are written from his own interpretation and his own experience, like 'Unsaddle David's Sorrel' " (a poem about a friend killed in a car accident).

Former state folklorist Mike Korn admires Logan's poems and his grasp of the cowboy poetry tradition.

"Mike has a real gift for that style. He's come to develop a real understanding of the ranching lifestyle," Korn says.

The cowboy poet tradition dates back to the mid-1800s. Back then, recitation was common in the old country schools and it transferred over to the campfire.

"It's an oral tradition, not a written tradition," Korn adds. It also has deep ties to English ballads and sea shanties.

"It's unusual for a guy with his background and lifestyle who has so mastered the idiom and mastered all the sentiments that come out of those poems," Korn says. "I rank him amongst the best of Montana's current cowboy poets. He has an abiding love for the culture and the history it comes from."