On falling in the river with Margaret Fell

Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith

‘So I sat me down in my pew again, and cried bitterly’ Margaret Fell. 1694

When I sat down, the silence
was already rising,
a river of quick fire.
Like a body, flowing,
it called to me. Quaking,
I fell whole, no jot, no tittle
withheld but all of me – falling.
I wept to find that I was ice,
pure ice and that this thing
in me wanted melting…

Those years I’d spent, or gathered
had hardened into icicles.
And I was sun-hurt, brightly brittle. 
Spirit was fast tiding
and wanted to break loose,
shatter the house I’d taken
for my being –

My heart felt so tickled,
I laughed out loud to see
water pure as light…
I was not only swimming in it:
It swam through me.
A truth I tell you,
sweetly brimmed
like a cup drawn coolly
from deep springs.

We are thieves, all thieves,
I know. All want forgiveness.
Yet this I’ve seen: our one life
is this river – most else
is smoke and ash,
guttering and gimcrack.
And if you ask me why
I walk, I breathe,
I’d say it was to fall
and fall again
into this silvering,
this silence, I’ll call river.

Dana says ‘This Advent poem was written in response to Ben Pink Dandelion and Wendy Hampton’s Woodbrooke course on the Essentials of Quakerism. The Margaret Fell text, which in part inspired it, can be found in Quaker faith & practice 19:07’.

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