7am on a September morning in north Essex

In 2006 I took part in a week-long sponsored horse ride in Kenya, in an area called Laikipa, to the north east of Mount Kenya. My mind was taken back there the other day, as I stepped out into my garden first thing in the morning. It seemed a moment for poetry.

The chill edge of morning’s air gently bites my skin,

Its sharpness softened by the memory of yesterday’s warmth

Still held within the whispering dawn:

A new day which holds its own promise of hot light, bright heat,

To cover me, comfort me, closely hold and stupefy me.

And so I sit a while and coolly breathe

And in my mind

Walk slowly into the shimmering day.

And as I do my mind skips back,

Fleet of thought,

Some fourteen years

And southwards, several thousand miles,

To 7am on a bright new morning in Laikipia.

I wake in green-hued light, cocooned in warmth,

The sound of zzzip my gentle alarm

As my tigger-ish tent-mate is up and out

And back with a cup of steaming strong Kenyan tea,

Bright and bold, welcoming me to the day and the day to me.

The quality of light and air is, briefly, just the same

Across the hemispheres and years –

Softly sharp, opening up hot hours ahead;

The sound track of birds and leafy breeze both similar and strange,

The fragrance distinctly different then, full with rich red earth.

And so my memory trips along,

Remembering wilderness rides in easy company,

With scent of warm horse and occasional sight

of zebra, giraffe, and plump guinea fowl;

Reliving banquets under acacia tree shade,

And midday waking siestas, quietly talking, horses resting;

Feeling once again the nervous rush of a herd of elephants heard nearby

And a hasty exit off through scrub and trees to safe space.

I recall cold showers rigged above canvas cubicles,

Calls of nature responded to behind scant shelter of thorn bushes,

Yellow fever trees along a river bank,

The sound of hippos in the dark,

And a campfire holding the cool of night at bay

Before we retreat once again to tents and mats and bags and sleep

And drift away, until the morning comes.

And so I brew my tea with leaves from Kenyan climes

And sit in English morning air

And both are real and present to me here,

Life and memory layered, interleaved,

And I a creature briefly outside time

Or, somehow, full of these twinned times.

I sit, and breathe, and ease into another day.