A parent looks back on watching his daughter grow up, and the poem keeps returning to one image: her small fingers slipping out of his hand. It first happens at the bus stop, when she climbs the steps alone, and he understands she is now on her own. The speaker recalls rocking her to sleep, brushing her hair and walking her to school. Then comes a later moment, her giddy phone call before a first date, when she doesn't ask what to wear. Each time, he realizes a little more that she doesn't need him in the old way.
The mood is tender and wistful, with a quiet sadness but no bitterness. The repeated four-line refrain works like a heartbeat, circling the same ache. The ending offers comfort. Imagining his own death, he pictures her holding his hand tightly, so the gesture reverses. In the final refrain, the tear falls because "she knew I was always there." The letting go, the poem suggests, was never really a loss of closeness.