The Midnight Visitors - from Poems of the Truths of Me

The Midnight Visitors
from Poems of the Truths of Me

Every third week at midnight—
give or take a day, or a month—
I miss the people from my past.
Not always the same ones.
Not always the same aches.
Not always the same love.
Not even always the same attachments.
But they come.
They don’t knock.
They don’t speak.
They just arrive—
in the quiet,
in the corners,
in the weight behind my eyes.

I let them stay.
For a few hours.
No bargaining.
No dramatics.
No honest recriminations.
Just presence.

And then, at 6AM,
I return.
To the here.
To the now.
To the work, to the living life,
to the breathing— 
when the subtle sadnesses dry from my eyes.

It’s not forgetting.
It’s not denial.
It’s rhythm.
It’s survival — Mine.

I am a man,
And a man of my times,
Born and bred and trained—
The boy who became the man, silently.

I do not break away tears free and clear.
My floods arrive
In the darkness, in silent valleys of the mind,
Where memory and sentiment rise unbidden,
In moments where no one knows
Where I am—
Or if I am.

Still, yes, I am who I am,
And always will be, me.
The midnight visitors know this,
See what no one else is permitted to see,
And then they leave me, in peace.
Eventually.

Perhaps those midnights travel with the moon,
For there are midnights of every living day.
I can endure the once-in-a-whiles,
Because they are not every living day.
I am not haunted. I am visited —
by the midnight visitors.
And therein lies the truth of me.

Copyright 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
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