“What is all this love for if we have to walk into the dark?” (M.R. James)

This is no country for old women
Scavenging among the shops of younger
Birds feathered-fit for triumphalist high-fives
Impatient of scarecrow’s creaking shoes, masked
Grimace reaching for a tin on a grocer’s shelf.

Pain exacts through sickness and age
Its own price, even as we gingerly kneel
To find the lisolia of those now lost to sight,
Praying hands held aloft, clasping light
In the aftergloom of laughter’s ghosts.

In the heartmoor of these days and nights
Visions appear, and I press forward into the dark
Of words that like crumbs from the children’s table
Fall upon me, as manna, as showers, as stories
Of love that even scarecrows can laugh to tell.

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Linda at dVerse asks us to choose one or more words from a list of neologisms to write a poem. Click on Mr. Linky and join in! I've chosen "heartmoor," "aftergloom" and "lisolia," definitions of which are given in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
Aftergloom: the pang of loneliness you feel the day after an intensely social event, as the glow of voices and laughter fades into a somber quiet.
Heartmoor: the primal longing for a home village to return to, a place that no longer exists, if it ever did.
Lisolia: the satisfaction of things worn down by time, broken in baseball mitts, the shiny snout of a lucky bronze pig, or footprints ground deep into floorboards by generations of kneeling monks.