The Poetry Show: Spring Arrives

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

It is the 152nd Birthday of Robert Frost.

 

It is a season of Fire, Rain and Skunk Cabbage.

mary oliver, emily dickinson, william carlos williams, gillian clarke, robert frost, ww, dh lawrence

 The Pasture

Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded March 26, 2025

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Last Stop Cafe: This Shit Has No Bottom

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: This Shit Has No Bottom

To Hell in a Handbasket

 

 

Thursdays 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Mike, John and James depart from the sports, entertainment, and recovery culture discussions to take account of the horror show into which this country is being daily transformed.

This Episode Recorded 3/25/2026 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Last Stop Cafe: Women’s Soccer Blowout Ed.

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Women's Soccer Blowout Ed.

Big League Women's Soccer Champs!

 

 

Thursdays, 10 AM on www.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Mia Hamm (Two-time World Cup & Olympic Champion) "I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion".

This Episode Recorded Mar 18 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Last Stop Cafe: Trades and Recruits

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Trades and Recruits

And pluck till time and times are done...

 

 

Broadcast LIVE Thursdays, 10 AM

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Are there more lawyers than players in  pro sports?

This Episode Recorded 3/12/2006 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

Last Stop Cafe: When a Bat is a Weapon

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Last Stop Cafe: When a Bat is a Weapon

Rough Play!

 

 

Thursdays, 10 AM

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

After the game is over, and the bodies are removed from the arenas and grounds. The lions are satiated. The children who failed to go to bed on time have all been devoured. Play Ball!

This Episode Recorded March 3, 2026 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Poetry Show: Safe Harbors

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Unexpected Poetics -- Seeking, and Finding Safe Harbor

 

 

Poets Dinah Hawken, Tracy K Smith, Ralph Williams, Don Hynes visit the peace of harbors.

This poem by David Gregory, Reading the Bar/Whakatane Harbour, like the sea, does not encourage adjectives.

 

Reading the Bar

Whakatane Harbour

 

Such a liquid language

lisping between the headlands

with a slight disturbance of syntax

over the rocks, fresh and salt;

the river knuckling under.

Read the slurred waves.

Air as braille

against the skin, hair;

always more episodes of driftwood.

An interrogation of gulls

demand their living

off the backs of water.

The sea is not

contained by adjectives

– sullen, playful, unforgiving –

the insult of ignorance

has a sure response.

A woman stands alone

literate in grief.

 

David Gregory

Based on a True Story, Sudden Valley Press, 2024

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

The Poetry Show: The Outer Planets

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Outer Planets and beyond: What are we really looking at?

Sarah Doyle, David Sutton. Derek Walcott and Ada Limon answer.

Broadcasts LIVE: Wednesdays, 10 AM Eastern Time.

Hosts: Janet Harrison and John Case

This Episode Recorded 2/17/2026

 

 

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

by Ada Limon

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Poetry Show: The Planets

 

A Poetical Survey of the Inner Solar System

 

 

The Poetry show is hosted by John Case and Janet Harrison. This episode was recorded Feb 17, 2026, at the RedCaboose studio.

 

Janet has found provocative illustrations of the planetary view from Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Asteroids, Jupiter and Saturn. Kenneth Rexroth, Wyn Cooper, Derek Walcott, Liz Garton, and more.

What is the planetary view really looking at?

 

It is difficult to not pass on a gem from Kenneth Rexroth.

 

On What Planet

By Kenneth Rexroth

 

Uniformly over the whole countryside
The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward;
The autumn haze drifts in deep bands
Over the pale water;
White egrets stand in the blue marshes;
Tamalpais, Diablo, St. Helena
Float in the air.
Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter’s Hill
We look out over fifty miles of sinuous
Interpenetration of mountains and sea.
 
Leading up a twisted chimney,
Just as my eyes rise to the level
Of a small cave, two white owls
Fly out, silent, close to my face.
They hover, confused in the sunlight,
And disappear into the recesses of the cliff.
 
All day I have been watching a new climber,
A young girl with ash blonde hair
And gentle confident eyes.
She climbs slowly, precisely,
With unwasted grace.
 
While I am coiling the ropes,
Watching the spectacular sunset,
She turns to me and says, quietly,
“It must be very beautiful, the sunset,
On Saturn, with the rings and all the moons.”

 

The Poetry Show Podcast is hosted live (most) Wednesdays at 10 AM on Enlighten Radio. You can listen here, here, or here.

 

Comments, suggestions, objections: contact host@enlightenradio.org