A/N Poem not mine, Collins not mine (I just borrow him to cuddle with!) Many many thanks to those of you who reviewed! Especially to angel718 who reviewed both times! On we go.

Tom Collins, 34, Professor of Philosophy, Computer Programmer, Vagabond Anarchist

There is only one place from which I could conduct my interview with Collins; from his lap. Cross legged on top of his khakis with my head leaning against the brawny chest, looking straight up into those glowing brown eyes it's easy to see how Angel fell in love with him after only a few hours. We're sitting on a faded green armchair that completely clashes with the red walls of my father's library. It gets the most light of any room in the house and the early evening sunset is pouring through the windows.

"Your daddy's my kinda guy if he can read as many books as this," Collins says shaking his head.

"When I was little I used to think every book in the world was in here."

He grins at me. Collins has the best grin ever; as wide and sparkling as the Cheshire Cat. When he smiles his brown, leathery face opens wide with gladness and his eyes scrunch up almost closed. Everyone says that Collins is the "big brother of the entire world." He wants only to take care of and keep happy all those smaller than him. That's almost everyone.

"So Collins," I ask. "What is your favorite poem?"

"My favorite poem is Henry David Thoreau's 'I am the Autumnal Sun.'"

"Thoreau! Why didn't I guess?"

He laughs, low like thunder but sweet and slow and amber warm like honey.

"Remember English last year?" he asks. I nod, rolling my eyes.

"Boy, do I ever. What a day."

Last year my teacher Mrs. Rossi covered a big chunk of Thoreau with us. It came out of a battered, paperback textbook thick as a bible. But even with its girth the type was so small the philosopher's long rambling sentences crowded together like tiny boats seen from a dock half a mile away. To make matters worse, that night I got sick with a terrible fever as I tried to comprehend the reading. Collins sat up all night with me and explained it sentence by sentence, then helped me write my first paper of the year. Knocked Mrs. Rossi's socks off and cemented me as the head of the class. I could listen to him talk for ages.

"Read it to me?"

The way I say it it's as though I'm asking for a bedtime story rather than an A on a project. Collins smiles and removes a slim volume from his side. He licks his fingers and turns a few pages. Then in that beautiful African drum voice he begins.

"I am the Autumnal sun,
With Autumn gales my race is run.
When will the hazle put forth its flowers,
And the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest and the hunter's moon
Turn my midnight into midnoon?
I am all sere & yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods
The winter is lurking within my moods
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief,
My gay colored grief,
My autumnal relief."

My first thought is that the poem is too short for Collins' beautiful, flowing intonations. I'd expected something more like Whitman's "Song to Myself," long and nonlinear. At least I'm in the right ballpark.

"So I'm sure Angel told you all the stuff I'm going to ask but where did you hear this? I'm sure you read it in college. Going for your degree right?"

"Actually no. First time I heard this poem was my senior year in high school."

Collins removes a cigarette from his pocket. Quickly I go to my father's desk and find the matches inside a baggy with his cigars. I hand it carefully to him.

"Gracias, baby. Do you mind?"

"Nah, nah, go right ahead."

He smiles around the cig and lights. The gray, ashy smoke fills the air. I go back to my place in his lap. It's going to get in my clothes and my hair, but I don't mind. Secretly I like the smell of cigarettes. Swirling but sickly. Dirty but light.

"Well…let's see…" He blows out and I can almost see his words in the smoke. "Yeah, it was my senior year and I was seventeen in Richmond Virginia. And um…that was just a mega crazy time for me because high school has to be an absolute torment. You know I was just starting to experiment with being gay in a Southern town. I was really a geek socially and once I thought I might be gay it was like a bomb had hit. I couldn't wait to get out of that place, man. Everybody was so stupid. I was filling out collage applications like crazy. I'd go somewhere, anywhere but where I was. And in the middle of all this my father was dying of brain cancer."

I gasp. Collins has never really talked openly about his past before. I'd often wondered where he'd been before college, travel and that freezing East Village flat with Benny, Roger, Mark and Maureen.

The gentle man sees my stunned reaction.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. I was a real family boy so I was devastated. My two older brothers were working four jobs between them because we had no health insurance. Momma was either working or at the hospital. I think we lived on pizza that entire year. I wanted to get a job too but Dad wouldn't let me. I was on track to getting a full scholarship to Brown and no Collins man had ever been to collage. I was my Dad's Atlas. He kept saying all he wanted was to see me graduate."

"Did he?" I ask. He nods absently.

"Yeah. Yeah he did. He watched me take that long ass walk across the stage in the auditorium of that school I hated and he beamed and cried the whole way. And ah…two weeks later he was gone."

He sighs and takes a long drag. Timidly I reach over and put my tiny, cold hand on top of his warm, soft one. It's like a dollop of cream in a steaming cup of coffee.

"After he died the grief I felt was like nothing I'd known before. It was grief but in a way I was happy for him. He'd been in so much pain for so long and it was finally over. And he'd gotten the one thing he wanted before he passed. I made a promise to him at his grave that I was gonna go and make something of myself. But I missed him somethin' fierce."

Another drag. His open, trusting face certainly reflects his words. He looks so sad.

"Just before I had to go away to school I had this major depressive spike. I couldn't believe I was leaving home and he wouldn't be there. So I did what I always do, what you always do too, I went into my books. Emerson, Socrates, Plato, Voltaire one of them had to have the answer. And lo and behold I stumbled across this."

He taps the book gently, as though it were a dog he's petting.

"I stumbled across this poem and found my answer in it."

I lean forward, avidly engrossed.

"How did you feel when you read it?"

"The first time I read it I didn't fully understand it," Collins says thoughtfully. "Even still, I felt as though a fire had been lit inside me. Not that raging, conscious fire that has always roared through me, but a glowing, warm feeling like from a hearth. I felt all those tepid, autumnal colors that flow through the poem. Somehow I knew. I knew that this was exactly what my father had felt. He didn't want to leave us but he knew that if he did we'd be all right. And that made him all right in the end."

He's so placid when he says this, so resigned, so totally balanced I could weep with envy. I always thought Collins was someone who had everything figured out. This proves it. I never, ever feel that way.

"Why do you love this poem?"

He rubs the coarse stubble that spreads across his chin and cheeks, smiling tranquilly.

"I love this poem because whenever I read it I get that same warm glow. It gave me a completely new outlook on death. What's wrong with death? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity and, god forbid, maybe even humor? Death is not the enemy, indifference to life is."

"That's from Patch Adams," I almost laugh.

"Robin Williams. Another great philosopher. Anyway that's what I felt. I was going to live every last minute of life. It was a lesson that would serve me well later on."

I feel a pang of sadness at that remark. Collins, like his lover and several of his friends, is HIV positive. To keep myself from getting sad, I push 'stop' on the recorder.

"That's great, Collins, really great," I say. "I think we're good. Thanks so much for doing this."

"Aw, it's been my pleasure, baby."

He kisses the top of my head and releases me from his embrace. Before getting up I lean against him and murmur in a low voice not nearly as beautiful as his:

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life. To put to route all that was not life and not, when it had come to pass…"

"…Discover that I had not lived," Collins finishes.

∞∞∞