The poem opens on a small shock: water sits where ice should be, as if the landscape has lost its winter coat. Calling ice "the expected fur" makes the cold feel like an animal's protective covering, something we assume will always be there. The speaker's fear that winter "will be undone" sounds quiet but real, and it reads as worry about a warming world, though the poem never says so outright.
The middle lines turn bitter. The "great glass maker," a striking image for whatever forges ice, will not save us, and "the company will profit / big with child" suggests a business growing fat on the situation, with the pregnancy image making that gain feel strangely natural and ongoing. The final image is the most tender and the saddest: a bear, thinning in its "amber house," trapped in a shelter that has turned from cozy to brittle. The mood is uneasy and resigned, with anger held under a very still surface. Winter's loss falls hardest on those who can't argue back.