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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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 B

Bear

Mythology
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

Revered animal spirit in many Native American traditions, symbolizing physical power, introspection, healing, and leadership.

Detailed Definition
The Bear is a revered spirit across Native traditions, representing healing, introspection, and warrior strength. Many tribes honor Bear in ceremonies, viewing it as a teacher of medicinal knowledge and hibernation as spiritual retreat. In poetry, Bear symbolizes resilience, ancestral power, and the deep connection between human and animal realms, often invoked in verses about trauma, recovery, and ecological balance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Bear appears in poetry as a healer whose hibernation mirrors cycles of introspection and renewal; A Tlingit-inspired poem describes Bear teaching humans to dream deeply during winter’s silence; In warrior verse, Bear embodies strength tempered with restraint—claws sheathed unless provoked; Contemporary poets invoke Bear as protector of sacred sites threatened by pipelines; Bear’s fur becomes a metaphor for ancestral warmth in poems about intergenerational care.
Additional Notes
Bear is a pan-tribal symbol of strength, healing, and introspection in Native American mythology; among the Ojibwe, bear is linked to medicinal knowledge, while in Navajo tradition, bears appear in emergence stories—poets should specify tribal context when invoking Bear, as meanings vary widely, and avoid reducing the animal to a generic totem without cultural grounding.
Also Known As
Makwa Maskwa Mato Great Roaring Bear thole
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