Stranger on the road

After Luke 24:28-35

They meet a stranger

on the road, and they

talk, walk together

to the village 

in the west. They talk

of what had happened,

momentous things,

surprising the stranger

with intensity, conviction,

as they tell their story

incomplete in the fading light

and growing shadows 

of the dying day. He moves

to leave them, but he stays.

They eat, and the stranger,

in a strange communion,

takes the bread,

blesses the bread,

breaks the bread,

gives the bread. 

The bread is an act

of remembrance,

opening their eyes

in time to see

the stranger vanish.