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A cold front passed through last night. It brought fierce thunderstorms and punctured the night with streaks of lightning and growls of thunder. In its wake, it has has left unseasonably cool air. The morning is concealed in fog. I feel as if I am inside a pearl.

The silence is heavy. The sun has not yet pierced this murky nebula to rouse the wildlife. All God's creatures are sleeping late.

Through the miasma, I hear the lonely tremolo of a loon, the only other being awake in my part of the world. I can barely make out his silhouette in the gloom.

He has likely been blown off-course, perhaps took refuge here when surprised by the sky's anger last night. Loons prefer smaller bodies of water, small ponds hidden by thick forest, ponds small enough to play host to a solitary pair who mate for life and rarely stray beyond its shores. My lake is too large for comfort, a mansion too large for a sole pair of loons to maintain.

The loon's song is nature's most haunting sound. It speaks of tragedy, of solitary anguish, of hopelessness. It is the sound of loss, of the knowledge that nothing will ever be the same again. It is the sound the universe makes when it mourns.

Good evening, and welcome to this year's Donor Appreciation Banquet.

I recognize that in years past, the keynote address has traditionally been filled with bestowal of accolades and individual recognition for the kind contributions you have all given. In years past, this speech has been accompanied by slideshow presentations depicting your smiling faces as you hand over checks. In years past, the person at this podium has asked each of you to stand and receive applause for your generosity.

This year, however, I wish to cast off the cloak of tradition and bring reality into our midst. You all know each other, you all know what each other look like, and you each know what you have contributed. There is no cause, then, for me to introduce you to each other.

Mind you, your contributions are greatly appreciated — without them, we would be unable to do what we do and people would go hungry as a result — but tonight, I hope to prompt you each to ask yourselves what more you can do.

Tonight, instead of introducing you to people whom you already know, I want to tell you about the people we serve.

Those who come to us have been beaten by fate. In a country where we are told, beginning in grade school, of the potential inherent in freedom — that the lowest may become the highest, that all may aspire to greatness, that this is a land of opportunity in which anyone may grow up to be President — the dirty little secret is that when one does climb to great heights of success, they do so, whether intentionally or through inadvertence, only by stepping upon others along the way.

These are people who know better than to buy into the American dream. They understand the way things work, that in a country built upon competition, there is no such creature as safety. They know that in a country which rewards greed, anyone may fall victim. They know that for each success story, there are broken people lying in the victor's wake. They know that catastrophe is but a breath away for any of us, that this is a land of great opportunity, but also one of great risk.

They know this because it has happened to them.

These downtrodden are the bastard children of excess, shuttled off as lepers to secret places to be hidden from view lest their presence cause guilt and discomfort.

Perhaps you have not knowingly brought loss to anyone. Perhaps your success is attributable solely to humanitarian sources and your generosity is born of genuine charity. Perhaps you have not personally caused anyone to suffer, but the odds are favorable that if you look around this room, you will see someone who has.

Let me tell you about Louise, one of our regular patrons. Once upon a time, Louise lived in a comfortable home in a quiet subdivision with her husband and two children. Her husband was a salesman for a pharmaceutical company and spent five days each week on the road, so the weekends were special. The weekends were family time for her and her children. Her life was happy.

Several years ago, her husband changed jobs, accepting a higher paying position with another company. During the transition, there was a brief period when he was without health insurance as he awaited coverage from his new employer.

It was during those few weeks that he was diagnosed with liver cancer that took his life five weeks after his diagnosis. Louise, as a consequence, was left with tremendous debt and little income. A few short weeks after his death, she lost her home to foreclosure and spent several nights living with her small children — then six and nine years old — beneath a bridge until space in a homeless shelter became available.

Let me tell you about Thomas. When his father died, Thomas took over the small auto parts supply store his father had started before Thomas was born. Thomas made a comfortable living running the business until a large national auto parts chain opened a store two blocks away from his shop. The competition was too great, and within six months, Thomas had lost the business, his home, and his sanity.

Thomas was relegated to life in a homeless shelter for several months. Bitter, angry, and broken, he came to us in his time of need and we fed him, but we could not provide what he needed most, a regained sense of dignity. When his tenure at the homeless shelter lapsed, Thomas hanged himself in the public restroom of a city park where he had lived for several days.

Let me tell you about Calvin, a mentally challenged man who grew up in a loveless home with an alcoholic father and a mother who deserted him when he was just seven years old. Calvin grew up unable to learn any survival skills, save for those he learned in the streets.

Driven by hunger, Calvin robbed an elderly couple downtown one evening and was caught an hour later in a McDonald's a few blocks away, stuffing himself on the few dollars which were the spoils of his crime. He spent seven years in prison before he was released, but his freedom consisted of nothing more than being turned back out onto the streets with the same lack of survival skills and the same lack of love.

When Calvin came to us three years ago, he had not eaten in ten days. He had been suffering from the flu and had attempted to seek refuge from near-freezing temperatures in an empty warehouse downtown. When he was unable to break inside, he found a cardboard box and huddled inside, hoping to fall asleep so that when death came, it would be painless.

It was there that a police officer found him while responding to a call from a passerby who thought he might be trying to vandalize the building. The officer took him to the hospital, where Calvin was treated for dehydration and released. When he was discharged from the hospital, the officer brought him to us. We fed him and his gratitude was so great that, to this day, he continues to volunteer with us.

These are but a few examples of those who have come to us for help. There are scores more, some who have done well and others who have not. Regardless, however, you have helped them in their time of need. Your contributions have fed them when they were hungry, given them shelter when they were homeless, and given them clothing when they had none.

But your contributions have not given them what they need most, and that is love. It may warm your heart to no end to write a check and send it to us, and we are grateful for that, but their presence has only been known to you as a debit on your bank statements. Their faces, however, have remained hidden from you.

At least until tonight. Tonight, they are in your midst.

Please look around the room at those who have waited upon you this evening, those who have brought your dinner, those who have filled your cups. They are all people whom we feed on a daily basis. They have cooked your meal. They have placed in front of you the dessert you now eat, and they will clean your dishes after you leave.

They are all homeless.

They have come here at my request. With the blessing of the country club, they came here early this afternoon, were fitted for the uniforms they now wear, and spent a few hours listening to me give them a short course in etiquette (and please forgive them for any breaches of decorum - the fault lies with their instructor, not them).

They have all come here and served you without pay, save for the promise of a meal which they will sit and eat in this very room after you have all gone home.

Tonight, when they leave here, they will not go home to their families. They will not go home to a restful night's sleep in their own beds. They will not go home at all. They haven't any.

These faces upon which you look are the faces of those who have fallen. These are the blameless. These are my heroes.

In the past, I have heard a number of you describe your contributions as a means of giving back to the community for the opportunites with which you have been blessed in life, but you have no idea what thankfulness is, and you have no concept of need. There is only one way in which you can truly understand how blessed you are.

Come. Feed them. There is a sign-up sheet in the lobby.

There is, about rivers, some mystical and otherworldly quality that calls to me, even though I nightly lay my head within mere feet of the largest lake in my home state.

Perhaps it is the fact that there are no real boundaries between riverbed and shore. Rivers constantly move and change, carving new paths into earth until the river's course carries it where once there was land and land appears where once there was water.

Perhaps it is the depth of the observation by Heraclitus that "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man."

Perhaps, rather, it is some divine urge born of the same source that lends to Christian thought the belief that water is the instrument by which sin is cleansed, and that baptism in running water is deemed more pious than in still water.

It could also be the knowledge that all things, living or not, eventually go to water, that water is the sine qua non of existence and sustainable life, and that rivers are Mother Earth's circulatory system, the arteries through which nature's lifeblood courses.

Whatever its source, rivers are magnetic and I am steel. Few things are as enjoyable to me as perching atop a boulder in mid-stream and dancing the delicate T'ai Chi dance of the flyfisherman, deliberately measuring the four-point whip-snap of every cast and sending a rubbery lime-green arc through the air to drop a fly precisely where I want it.

Some have expressed bewilderment that I can be so absorbed by flyfishing and yet loathe any other form of the sport. To me, however, they are as different as night and day, opposites of each other, in a way. Flyfishing is a thinking-man's sport, a zen-like transcendent endeavor, quite unlike sitting in a boat and attempting to drink enough beer to sink it.

Last weekend, there was a bass-fishing tournament at my lake. Professional fishermen from around the world showed up and caused a tremendous stir. Excitement abounded. The lake was full of boaters from elsewhere, all lured by the lure.

Out for a boat ride last Saturday morning, I spotted one of the competitors zipping along in his sparkly expensive bass boat. Following him was a convoy of spectators. He throttled down in the cove across from my house. His fans hovered, giving him a suitable cushion so as not to disturb his concentration and scare the fish.

Until last weekend, I had thought that lake fishing must be one of the most boring pastimes as can be imagined. Seeing these spectators, however, I found myself thinking, "If fishing is boring, how pathetic one's life must be to enjoy watching someone fish.

And then I realized that I was watching someone who was watching someone fish.

I have, I learned just this morning, landed a part in our local theatre group's upcoming production of one of my all-time favorite plays, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. It has been almost 20 years since I've appeared on stage (aside from poetry slams and the like) and I'm ecstatic about making a return to the curtain.

I tried out for the part of "the Player" (the character portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss in the 1990 movie version, if you're familiar with it). I didn't think I'd have much chance of getting the part, once I saw the audition of one of the other actors.

So it was, then, that I was not disappointed when the news was delivered that I did not get my intended part. However, I was surprised - very much so, in fact - when I was informed that I'd been given one of the two lead roles. I'll be playing Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman's part, in the movie).

I can't wait...