In a dream just before waking, the speaker meets another version of himself, one whose life took a different path. The speaker worked at a diner, flipping burgers, while this other self went to graduate school and now teaches cultural studies. He has housemates, a crowd of cats, and a loving relationship with a woman he kisses goodnight. The speaker watches all this "in wonder," which suggests curiosity more than envy, though a quiet wistfulness hangs over the scene.
The ending lands the hardest. The alter-ego says he gave up poetry years ago, a surprising confession given his success, and the speaker is left to wonder what that trade-off meant. Then he asks what the speaker did to turn his beard white, as if the speaker's life has been the harder one. Each self seems to see what the other has and lacks. The mood is gentle, strange, and tinged with regret, the feeling of waking up unsure which life was the better one.