Richard Frost
by William Teets
Dr. Richard Frost—professor, poet, mentor, and friend—growled low, super-pissed, whenever I called him Bobby. He’d promise to napalm snowy woods and diverging paths, extinguish Derry, New Hampshire at sunrise. I’d howl, he’d eventually smile, and we’d get too drunk to write any steel-beam metaphors. But, man, could that cat turn a phrase, flip free-flying imagery to harbor worrisome winds, alchemy nickels and dimes into silver dollars with one-cent words. The first time he introduced me as a poet to his colleague, I wouldn’t have traded that title if the Queen of fucking England wished to knight me Sir Duke. Laid up in a hospice recliner, his Foxhound Falstaff on his righthand side, Richard’s death-stare found my vaunted eyes. Like a bad cliché on a dark and stormy night, he beckoned me closer, commanded the universe, and shouted if I ever wrote poetry like Robert Fucking Frost, he’d have no choice but to come back after death, disrupt the astral plane, and haunt me endlessly. Steal my top shelf booze to share with demons or angels, depending on his mood. I howled again. So did Falstaff. And wherever great poets go after they die, I cannot say, but when Richard Frost’s last breath expelled, I cracked the wax seal of the finest spirits I had—in his honor—because he would have approved of that. And as I temporarily avoided death’s final grip in the beauty of the sun-bronzed body of autumn-brown bourbon, I tuned my senses toward the ether and begged Dr. Richard Frost for one more line, one more verse, one last turn for the gods.
William Teets, born in Peekskill, New York, has recently relocated to Southeast Michigan. He misses New York pizza, corner stores, and the Hudson River. Mr. Teets’ poetry and prose have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Blood+Honey, Underbelly Press, The Engine (Idling, San Pedro River Review, Ink in Thirds, and Ariel Chart. He is the author of two poetry books, After the Fall (2023) and Babylon Redux (2025), both published by Cajun Mutt Press.