The tie-loving ghost

“Last night my color-blind chain-smoking father
who has been dead for fourteen years
stepped up out of a basement tie shop
downtown and did not recognize me.’’

— From “My Father’s Neckties,’’ by Maxine Kumin (1925-2014), a U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner and a Warner, N.H., horse farmer.

Statue of New Hampshire Gov. Walter Harriman in Ms. Kumin’s town of Warner, N.H.

A kind of resort

In the Waterloo Historic District, in Warren, N.H. It encompasses the site of one of the first mills on the Warner River.

“The seldom-traveled dirt road by their door

is where, good days, the Scutzes take their ease.

It serves as a living room, garage, pissoir

as well as barnyard. Hens scratch and rabbits doze

under cars jacked up on stumps of trees.’’

From the ‘‘Leisure’’ section of “Saga,’’ by Maxine Kumin (1925-14), a Pulitzer Prize-pwinning poet who from 1976 until her death lived with her she husband lived on a farm in Warner, N.H., where they bred Arabian and quarter horses.