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 E

Ember Days

Time And Calendar
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

Four sets of traditional Christian fasting days spread through the year. They mark seasonal change, prayer, and reflection.

Detailed Definition
Ember Days are four groups of fasting and prayer days distributed across the Christian year, roughly corresponding to the changing seasons. Historically connected with ordinations, agriculture, and thanksgiving, they offer poets a recurring framework for spiritual and natural transition. Their sparse, disciplined character can shape poems about waiting, bodily need, and cyclical time. Because they return at intervals, they can also serve as quiet markers of a life measured through ritual rather than dates alone.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ember Days can give a poem a recurring pattern of fasting, prayer, and seasonal change across the church year; A poet may use the autumn Ember Days to connect ordination, ripening fields, and the responsibilities of spiritual work; In a spare devotional lyric, a speaker fasts on an Ember Day while listening to rain strike the chapel roof; The four sets of Ember Days can structure four stanzas, each reflecting on one season and its particular losses
Additional Notes
Ember Days are seasonal fasts in the Christian calendar, often linked to ordination and thanksgiving. Their restrained mood can contrast with festivals of feasting or natural abundance.
Also Known As
Embertide
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