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 C

caulk

Craft Terms
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

Caulk means to fill or seal gaps to make something tight or secure; in poetry, it can suggest closing cracks in a structure or repairing emotional gaps through language.

Detailed Definition
Literally, caulk is used in building and shipwork to seal spaces and prevent leakage. In poetry, it can appear metaphorically when a speaker tries to mend breaks, contain loss, or seal meaning into form. Its presence in craft language comes from the idea of careful repair and sound construction.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet might use caulking as a metaphor for sealing emotional gaps left by silence or loss; In a poem about shipbuilding or coastal labor, caulking can symbolize the careful sealing of vulnerability; A confessional poem may describe caulking a childhood home as an image of trying to preserve a fading memory; Caulk imagery can suggest the fragile barriers people build against grief or fear; A poet describing a marriage might use caulking a boat as a metaphor for patching over unspoken conflict; In ecopoetry, caulking gaps in a structure can symbolize humanity's attempts to hold back encroaching nature.
Additional Notes
Caulk is a less common craft term in poetry criticism, drawn from the practical vocabulary of shipbuilding and construction, where it refers to sealing gaps to prevent leakage; in poetic use, caulking becomes a vivid metaphor for the effort to seal off vulnerability, silence, or unspoken truths within a relationship or self, and it pairs well with imagery of boats, ships, and other vessels that must be made watertight; instructors might introduce this term when discussing extended metaphors of domestic labor or maritime imagery, noting its practical, almost humble connotation compared to more elevated craft terms like cement or forge.
Also Known As
seal fill waterproof stop gaps
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