Lenore was the middle sister, sandwiched between Ione, who left the farm early for sophisticated society in Chicago, and Madgie, the baby. Seven brothers, some older and some younger, completed the brood.
Tenant farmers, the family never seemed to overcome its “poor as dirt” existence. One year Ma made more money from her poultry than Pa made from the farm. Embarrassed by the large family and its failures, Ione wasted no time saying farewell.
Not so much for Lenore, though.
Born and raised in LaSalle County, along the Illinois River and surrounded by what is arguably the richest soil on earth, she was first a farmer’s daughter and then a farmer’s wife.
But, in the spaces between the chores that filled each day, she dreamed. She cultivated a love for storytelling and literature and beautifully turned phrases.
Unlike Ione, who fled the scene for something she imagined as better, Lenore saw through the muck and hardscrabble to catch sight of grace, goodness and truth on the farm.
What she saw captivated her enough to draw her back again and again. Without fail, she found treasures and wrote about them.
Madge pasted snippets of Lenore’s published poems in a scrapbook. She clipped them from the pages of magazines like the Ladies Home Journal and Coronet.
Here’s one, my favorite, from Today’s Poets.
SNOWSTORM
By Lenore Ballard Laatz
Grey, loose-knotted skies and uneasy winds
May have prophesied the white onslaught.
And since, I realized the uncowled timber
Had a waiting look. Two crows
Spoke briefly in the beech tree by the barn.
I know now they spoke of the storm.
Dawn was silence, silence and snow.
A cathedral stood where the barn had been.
Gone were the fences
I meant to mend.
White coifed nuns in rigid rows
Worshiped where the wood had stood.
An acolyte wind, ermine-tongued and thin, whispered
Now and again.
Before we are overtaken, there may be signs:
Flint winds, somber skies, a crow or two,
But there’s something about going off to bed
With tomorrow’s prophecies left unread
And loved work waiting
That makes for sleep,
And something too deep and wide and vast
For the mind to grasp
In the thought of waking, past all past.
Morris Sampler 