The Temperature In Aroostook County
Melancholy arrives with clouds and news the ocean
is 57 degrees at the Large Navigational Buoy this first
week of July, but joy follows when NPR notes the air
in Van Buren is 67 while Wells is only 59. Van Buren
is sunny too, maybe a reward for being progressive;
unlike Caribou and Presque Isle, the enlightened
electorate of Van Buren emulated neighbors in
Madawaska and St. Francis, voting for Hillary, an
anomaly not only in The County but around our rural
state where Donald won Fort Kent by 11 votes and
Glenwood Plantation 2 to 0. But light shines in Van
Buren where old Peaks Island friend Peter, back
from Vietnam, began his teaching career on the St.
John’s River, a school whose children spoke French
at recess. Thank you, God and the usually random
skies of Maine for news of brightness and warmth
on the eve of my 69th birthday in South Portland,
nearing the end of a life lived in improvisation
while others ably followed a crafted script, finishing
in paid-off houses with copious garages, extra
bedrooms, bountiful children close to home who
haven’t succumbed to amorphous bad luck. Hearing
the forecast on a day going the wrong way brings me
back onstage to a story constantly revised by teleological
playwrights. I’m driving my 17 year old car amid the
bearable lightness of being, certain the tank is full,
weather promising. For once, this poor player
neither struts nor frets. Indeed, I know all my lines.
Uncle Vanya In Mad Town
I could’ve been better at discussing Chekhov’s play though
I told students about a production in Cambridge, actors
on stage twenty-five minutes before curtain, passed out
from another Russian drinking night like those on old
Peaks Island. I might’ve said Chekhov was writing about
Maine, where long winter appropriates April and people
drink too much too early then wake to hard mornings.
The idea, one student said, is get out of Russia, but Vanya
was tethered, like Sonya, to the estate, could only long for
Yelena, the youthful beauty married to an old academic who
owned the place. My class was too young to understand a
Russian mid-life crisis that made this short, chubby man try
to shoot the selfish elder. They thought Vanya should take
a yoga class because I failed to tell them about Route 11.
Not the road near New Hampshire where he’d stock up
on cheaper vodka nor the middle near Millinocket, close to
summer concerts at Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor.
It’s south of Fort Kent, the stretch from Portage to Patten,
dubious cell service and tedious trees. It wouldn’t be easy
to live in Fort Kent, I should have said, though locals from
The County might disagree, pointing out contemplative
river views, poutine at the Swamp Buck Restaurant, a small
university campus where, if Vanya truly thought he could
have been Schopenhauer or Dostoyevsky, he’d take classes.
No need for Bangor if he experienced ennui. Only 20 miles
to racy Madawaska and Parisian-like beauties in bars redolent
of joie de Vivre rather than the anguish of Russian souls.
I see him driving along the St. John’s River, listening to radio
songs in French, crossing the bridge to Edmundston, heading
to Quebec where women take off their clothes on nights of
single digit cold then back to Mad Town where the VFW’s
onion soup has drawn veterans from far away as Van Buren.
But it’s too late. Maybe next semester I’ll place Vanya in
Presque Isle, eating Chinese alone from the Food Court’s
only restaurant in Aroostook Centre Mall. Maybe I’ll talk
more about Sonya and gloomy Dr. Astrov, but it’s windy,
10 degrees, and snow, says Channel 6, will be here soon.
Kevin Sweeney’s latest book is "Imminent Tribulations" from Moon Pie Press. He has taught at Southern Maine Community College since 1983 and is an assistant poetry editor at the Café Review for which he has done interviews with poets Carl Dennis, Kim Addonizio, Martin Esapda, Gerald Locklin, William Carpenter, and Margaret Randall.