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

Butternut

Flora
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

A type of walnut with elongated shape and oily flesh, symbolizing rustic simplicity, nourishment, and autumnal harvest in verse.

Detailed Definition
Butternut appears in North American poetry as a humble emblem of rural life and seasonal cycles. Its rich oil and earthy flavor connect it to hearth, harvest, and self-sufficiency. Poets use it to evoke nostalgia for agrarian traditions or the quiet dignity of foraged sustenance, often contrasting its simplicity with modern excess or disconnection from the land.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Appalachian poetry, butternut evokes homesteading: “Grandpa shelled butternuts by the woodstove, oil for lamps and bread”; Poets use it to symbolize autumnal simplicity: “Butternut brown like old letters, rich with memory”; In wartime verse, it represents scarcity and resilience: “We roasted butternuts when flour ran low”; Contemporary eco-poets mourn its decline due to canker: “No butternut left on the ridge—only ghosts of trees.”
Additional Notes
Butternut: Refers to Juglans cinerea, a North American walnut species with elongated, oily nuts; historically used by Indigenous peoples and early settlers for food and dye; in poetry, butternut can symbolize rustic simplicity, autumnal decay, or frontier resilience; distinguish from "butternut squash," a different plant entirely.
Also Known As
White walnut Oilnut
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