On Oakington
1
Lasting only to list what remained, they scattered:
West Wickham, Oakington, Roanoke.
Now ditches are hollow where paths ran and
Rooks liken it to an inbetween place.
Mounds mark what dwellings and barns were well founded.
Walking from Histon to Cottenham, it’s best to take the path running past
The windows of the former Histon Manor and gives out
In a green cupped lot right near West Wickham.
A proper deserted hamlet. But no church.
Just a fen edge as quiet as Oakington airfield.
2
The airfield empty,
We biked right through the open to see my nana and grandad
In Longstanton on its northern side.
Our leisure action, field and barracks.
Later there were static bursts that night.
My grandad moved to Oakington from Longstanton, eventually.
His little bungalow emptied him out of this world and, still smelling of dinners,
Vented family-done grief with all the doors and windows open,
As we remembered his white hair bending to work his lathe
Over the fields in Longstanton, and later at Ivy’s funeral after 60 years married.
3
I was up on starling and bat frequencies, though Varsitys ruined my night hearing.
The metal flag on the tower of St Andrew’s, Histon,
The bells inside, brings back nights when the A604 did not sound like it does now.
Silent new estates became gorges, or canyons, to me and I knew
That yellow night reached only to the last house before old Cottenham Road darkness.
In 1985 I was mugged by Oakington lads, 12 stitches in my head.
Hearing running, I turned in time and snapped a man’s arm
Against the wall of my dwelling.
When I was young and ready to go early in 1988,
I heard rapid fire and silence away over the fields.
4
Pathfinders flew 2,520 missions, unbeatable, all done by night.
Berlin air dripped from the leading surfaces of DC3s humping the mossy runway.
Fish and Avtur stuck fast to the insides of the transports squatted by young air movements men
To RAF Khormaksar, the sunny NLF and FLOSY.
Now secure hedges leak asylum claimants, who no one hears at night.
The Sun mid-paged two Oakington NCOs’ wives in 2000.
They’d got it on while their men did counter-terrorism training for Northern Ireland.
Between Ulster, what independent companies, detachments, had empty
Grass and concrete places opened secretly? In Cambridgeshire,
Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, Scillies, Ceredigion, Donegal.
5
Acts of settlement first strafe the land still, then,
Finding it better when it moves, move it.
Seepage aware on the fen edge, any stoppage, clod, pelt or hank to be
Forked and dragged out,
So the flow of sky and old rain gets going.
With the understanding that Oakington’s two-storied, yellow and red brick
Late modernity signifies the movement of a settlement in time,
I reeved, not to club down retirement aspirations,
But to call.
Then the inferences did a wider span.
Neil Palmer, 2004
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