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 O

On thin ice

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

In a risky or precarious situation; behaving in a way that is close to the limits of what is acceptable or safe.

Detailed Definition
The image of walking across ice of uncertain thickness captures the experience of proceeding without adequate security, each step a potential catastrophe. In poetry, it appears in works about social transgression, political risk, and romantic vulnerability—wherever the speaker proceeds through terrain that might not support their weight. Poets invoke it to capture the physical sensation of risk, the tentative step, the listening for cracks, the impossible knowledge of whether the surface will hold. The winter imagery connects to a rich tradition of cold as a figure for danger, isolation, and the brittleness of what appears solid. The phrase suits confessional poetry, where the speaker knows they are pushing against limits that may break beneath them at any moment.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about political dissidence — the speaker whose positions put them on thin ice with authorities — might use the idiom to describe the precarious condition of speaking truth in environments that punish it; In a love poem about the early stages of a relationship, on thin ice captures the tentative quality of the approach — each step testing the surface, uncertain whether the ice will bear the weight of what one hopes for; A poem about the experience of social transgression — the joke that might land badly, the question that might offend — might describe the speaker as being on thin ice, each word chosen with the care of someone who can hear the surface cracking; In a nature poem, the child testing the first winter ice is both the literal subject and the figure for any careful, hopeful advance into uncertain conditions; A poem about addiction in recovery might use on thin ice to describe the precarious condition of the person who has achieved sobriety but knows how little separates them from the ice that would not hold; The winter imagery of the phrase connects to the rich tradition of cold as a figure for danger and isolation in lyric poetry, the thinness of the ice a measure of how little separates the present safety from the catastrophe that waits beneath the apparently solid surface
Additional Notes
This phrase conveys risk through fragile surface imagery. In poetry, it can describe social danger, moral peril, forbidden love, political dissent, or emotional instability. The ice image is rich: beauty, coldness, transparency, cracking, and hidden depth beneath. It is especially effective when the speaker appears calm while the ground underfoot is ready to break.
Also Known As
In danger On shaky ground
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