A quiet autumn scene opens on grey mornings and the sound of herons passing overhead. The speaker steps into her garden, and her silken outer garment trails over withered leaves. A dried leaf crumbles at a touch, making the season’s decay feel sudden and close. The frost of the title is not described directly, but you can feel it in the cold air and the brittle garden.
Then the view widens. The speaker says she has seen many autumns, with herons blowing across the sky like smoke. There is no alarm in that thought — more a calm, elegiac acceptance. Beauty and loss sit side by side: silk and dead leaves, graceful birds and grey mornings. The mood is quiet, observant, and faintly mournful, as if the speaker has long understood that brightness fades and returns again.