Week 3: digging, finding, choosing

This week participants explored "Choice" by Ruth Padel 

Choice

Digging a bush up, pitching in
to damp earth, getting out
clutch-arms and fingertip veins

as easily broken as silk
I look into the mica eye
of a robin. This is what we say

we all want. The choice –
to go, to stay. But how does a robin decide?
How does anyone?
 

From The Mara Crossing: Poems and Prose on Migration and Home, Chatto & Windus, 2012.
Reproduced by kind permission of the author. 


This poem particularly resonated with the women from Maryhill Integration Network, who left their home countries seeking sanctuary under circumstances they did not choose. 

The theme of the robin also linked back to the second week's poem by Jackie Kay. 



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