To celebrate Easter enjoy this poem from A Sense of Tiptoe by Karen Hayes

The Supper at Emmaus

A stranger came to sit at our table,
Who ate our bread
As if it were food for kings.
A table bare of almost everything;
Rough loaf, oiled leaf,
A jug of Earthy wine,
A bowl of broth squeezed from the bone.
Beyond belief,
We brought a stranger home.

The linen laid, white turned yellow,
A cloth through which
The life already flowed.
No candle lit and yet that table glowed.
Hands meet.
Fingers bless and greet.
Nail to nail our shadows cross.
Palm to palm,
Leaves marks upon the cloth.

We talked and shared a dish
Of eggs and onions.
Goodman and wife,
Hot from the kitchen,
Used signs for words
We did not understand.
We called the neighbours, woke the street
To catch the crumbs
That scattered from a stranger’s hand.

At night an extra place
Is always laid.
One plate is set aside,
One knife, one spoon,
One portion spare,
One chair, one prayer however poor,
Kept in reserve for any traveller
Who walks the Emmaus road
And is hungry at our door.