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 D

Drag one's feet

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To act slowly or reluctantly; to delay action through passive resistance or unwillingness to proceed.

Detailed Definition
This embodied idiom imagines reluctance as a physical dragging of the body against forward motion, the will refusing what the feet are asked to do. In poetry, it captures the psychology of avoidance, grief, and the resistance the self mounts against necessary change. Poets invoke it to describe political inaction, the slow recovery from loss, or the protective lethargy that buffers against painful transition. Its kinesthetic quality—the dragging weight of feet—suits poems that insist on the bodily reality of psychological states. In social poetry, dragging feet becomes a metaphor for institutional resistance to justice, the bureaucratic slow-walk of reform that prevents urgency from becoming action.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about the reluctance to grieve — the mind's various strategies for not doing the work that loss demands — might use drag one's feet to describe the procrastination of the heart; In a political poem about institutional reform, to drag one's feet is the bureaucratic technique of apparent compliance that is actually designed to outlast the pressure for change — the feet moving slowly enough that nothing is ever actually achieved; The embodied quality of the idiom — the dragging weight, the friction of reluctance against forward motion — suits confessional poetry that insists on the physical reality of psychological states; A coming-of-age poem might describe the speaker's dragging of feet toward adulthood — the body compelled forward while the will resists, each developmental threshold crossed reluctantly and with a backward glance; In a poem about a difficult conversation that must be had, to drag one's feet names the delay of days, then weeks — the courage never quite sufficient to stop the dragging and simply walk into what is necessary; The kinesthetic image of dragging feet suits poems organized around movement — or its resistance — where the pace of the poem itself enacts the reluctance the speaker describes
Additional Notes
This phrase conveys reluctance through bodily motion. In poetry, it can describe delay that is passive rather than openly rebellious: a child, lover, official, or conscience moves slowly because it does not want to act. It pairs well with mud, heavy shoes, thresholds, corridors, and moral hesitation. The idiom can show resistance without dramatic confrontation.
Also Known As
Drag one’s heels Stall
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