Cold at first sounds like a gloomy poem about suffering, but it turns out to be a funny one too. The speaker is stuck in a freezing winter day, bundled in blankets, too chilled to move or think straight. The cold feels almost alive: it clings, squeezes, shoves its way through the threads of their clothes, and taunts them from within. Even layers of sweaters and coats can't stop it.
The mood shifts a little as the poem goes on. Sleep offers a brief escape, where the speaker imagines being warm "a mossy log," but waking brings back the gray sky and the shy sun. The final lines, where the speaker admits to no longer opposing global warming, land as a joke born of misery. The playful rhymes, like "shivering, huddled, crowded and mind-muddled," add to that humor. Overall, the poem captures the exhausted, grumpy desperation of being truly cold, and it asks us to laugh along.