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Helen Ruggieri

The Edgewood Tavern

A logging truck pulls out of the Edgewood loaded with trees - 60 or 70 years old, survivors from the last sweep the logging companies made that cleared the hill to scrub.

Some entrepreneur must have built the Edgewood then just off the Reservation back when liquor was forbidden. The old log cabin bar sits in a hole cut into the side of the hill off old Route 17.

The Senecas name things descriptively - the Edgewood - a tavern at the edge of the woods. You know it when you see it. The logs will be lumber, turned in to some useful thing. The Edgewood will sit surround by blank meadows.

The Edgewood will be what we call it, not a description. It's how we explain shade under a canopy of elms, for example, how light penetrated like voices of the lost tribes.

red thumb print
on the golden
hunter's moon

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