First Frost over Harvested Fields

Too dark before dawn to see them, but out there
are lakes of pale silvery starlight, from one shore
to another, not the tick of one cricket to warn us
of how thin the cracked ice is over the future,
were we out there and not alone at our windows,
peering into the dark, our breath on the black glass,
imagining what those fields must now look like
all covered in frost, and I think of my lost friend,
who is done with imagining now, no dawn
to come later for him, nor a warm breeze to lift
the bright chaff of first frost and then melt it away.