The speaker begins by calling out to a great frost, almost like a prayer, and asks it to turn "us" into ice, "dark and old as soldiers." The image suggests people made hard and still, fixed in place like figures who have stood watch for a very long time. The title makes us picture card players around a table, so the freezing may be a wish to stop the game and hold everyone in one moment.
The second stanza turns more quiet and sad. "So many days / have vacancies / that are not in the cards." Days are empty, and the cards, which suggest chance and fate, offer nothing to fill them. The speaker seems to feel that ordinary time has gaps no game can account for. The mood is cold, hushed and a little weary. Being turned to ice sounds frightening, but here it also reads as a kind of relief from emptiness, a wish to stop waiting for a hand that never changes anything.