Chris Connolly
Our Tree
If I could go back
you should know
I would
to that time when time passed more slowly
when years didn’t fly
and all was ahead;
I would not take an axe to things
like some crazed wood-cutter
flinging bark about the place
and killing the tree;
I would take my axe to the dead wood instead,
try to remain calm,
allow that tree of ours to grow
and enjoy the fruit
it might have borne.
Chris Connolly's fiction has appeared in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, Southword, the Galway Review and the Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction, among others, and has been broadcast on RTÉ Radio. Last year he won Best Emerging Fiction at the 2016 Hennessy Literary Awards, the RTÉ Francis McManus competition, the Easy Street Magazine 'Great American Sentence Contest' and, most recently, the Over the Edge: New Writer of the Year award. He has just completed an MA in Creative Writing in UCD, and his website is chrisconnollywriter.com.
Our Tree
If I could go back
you should know
I would
to that time when time passed more slowly
when years didn’t fly
and all was ahead;
I would not take an axe to things
like some crazed wood-cutter
flinging bark about the place
and killing the tree;
I would take my axe to the dead wood instead,
try to remain calm,
allow that tree of ours to grow
and enjoy the fruit
it might have borne.
Chris Connolly's fiction has appeared in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, Southword, the Galway Review and the Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction, among others, and has been broadcast on RTÉ Radio. Last year he won Best Emerging Fiction at the 2016 Hennessy Literary Awards, the RTÉ Francis McManus competition, the Easy Street Magazine 'Great American Sentence Contest' and, most recently, the Over the Edge: New Writer of the Year award. He has just completed an MA in Creative Writing in UCD, and his website is chrisconnollywriter.com.