This won 1976 statewide poetry contest for high schoolers

                                       Irreversible?

All alone by the sputtering flame-
      wisps of flame licking the charred hearth;
And I listen to the subtle static of the fire...
      I gaze blankly at the bricks of the fire side...
          watching them fade into a gray mist
      and reappear- always wearing a different guise;
          but they always return to a fluttering, formless
              figuration of an apathetic life.

Reclined in a worn wooden chair,
       relaxed in an easy manner,
Just thinking, thinking about the opportunities...

The stars have been shining for hours now,
       acclaiming their vast accomplishments.
The curtain less windows allow the faint candle light
       to play with the shadows of the muddied road-
   Peace is disturbed by the grumbling of a hundred toads...
I sigh and revert my vacant stare
To the few fingers of orange flame
       that still valiantly fight their irreversible doom;
And I seem to hear the cries of the cindery remains of the oak logs-
Or are they just echoes of my own unbreathed calls?

Ernie, spring 1976