E is for Eminent...and Exceptional...and Eliot

Welcome to the second week of the A-Z Challenge 2015, which is running Every weekday in April; and welcome back to those who have been reading last week. For this A-Z, my theme is Response Poems, and for each letter prompt I am introducing a poet I like, and using his/her poetry to come up with my own to post here, all in less than 400 words. Poetry's useful like that, it can say a lot in small wordcounts.  Though I personally have nothing against long, Elaborate posts, hey I like reading! I'll read whatever grabs my interest and holds it, long or short. Now, letter E -

is for Eliot, T.S. (1888-1965)

A famous American poet, and a major force in contemporary literature. Many consider his The Wasteland to be the single most influential poetic work of the last century.  

Responding here to his The Journey of the Magi

A December trip

It was not momentous, no-one like the Magi

undertook that trip, and no winter hardships

though it was December, yes, but the red eye

in the sun burnt mild, beyond unravelling strips

of cirrus clouds.  Unexpected events yanked us three

high into the skies, scooped away from our routine -

the earning of bread and learning by rote, housewifery,

the desolation of the savannah turning from green

to a mean yellow slow-blended with desert winds

that cut perpendicular to pressurised comfort

in the cabin, amply leg-roomed, cool, oxygenned,

the pilots suave, the cabin crew smart, expert,

served the meal trays somewhere over Lebanon

or maybe mountainous Iran, the dim origin

of the Kings, land of histories, epic connections

and scriptural sweep, only I didn’t know it then;

neither marked that exact moment my world fractured

a little, happened beyond my ken - the whole string

of those random events.  My father rendered

wordless, my mother in confused low-key mourning.

We flew East and landed, the cloaks and blankets,

the floor rugs felt comfortless, slightly threadbare.

Not a birth, we had journeyed for an out-of-turn death

and nothing had shattered, nothing major anywhere.

Do Elaborate posts put you off? What is the golden word limit - 100, 400, 1000?

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015