A father sits through a rushed breakfast while his young daughter explains her drawing of a dinosaur. She is completely absorbed: the dinosaur is thirsty, he went to the pool, he has tiny feet because the page is small. The father keeps asking questions, but his attention is elsewhere. He thinks about an unsent email and checks his phone for a meeting time.
The poem's quiet tension comes from that gap. Her imagination is full and logical, while his replies are automatic. His last question, "Is that a tree", gets only "There was a look," and that look says everything. The speaker doesn't excuse himself, and the poem doesn't scold him either. It simply lets the moment sit there. The odd opening line, "Except that soon he won't be," hints at something fleeting, perhaps this kind of childhood attention, though the poem leaves it open. The mood is gentle, funny, and quietly guilty.