A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Albedo

Science
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The proportion of light a surface reflects. In poetry, it can suggest brightness, concealment, or a world answering the sun.

Detailed Definition
Albedo measures how much incoming light a planet, moon, field of snow, or dark sea returns to space. A high albedo gleams; a low albedo absorbs heat and shadow. Poets may use it to explore reciprocal vision: the pale face that refuses darkness, the city roof flashing at noon, or the beloved whose presence changes the temperature of a room. Its scientific precision gives metaphor a useful tension between surface beauty and the hidden energies beneath it.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The snow’s high albedo sends noon back into the sky,” using reflectivity to make winter seem dazzling; A poem can contrast a black field’s low albedo with a child’s white coat to show how surfaces absorb or return light; “Her albedo changed with grief, bright rooms darkening around her,” uses the scientific term metaphorically for emotional radiance; In a climate poem, albedo can describe melting ice: “As the ice thinned, the sea kept more of the sun.”
Additional Notes
Albedo measures reflectivity: snow has high albedo, while dark soil absorbs more light. Use it to evoke glare, heat, or a landscape’s response to sunlight.
Other Meanings of “Albedo”
Also Known As
Reflectivity Reflecting Power
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