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

Osier

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 willow species with flexible branches used for basketry, growing near water.

Detailed Definition
Osiers appear in poetry as symbols of flexibility, utility, and the marriage of beauty with function. Their traditional use in basketry links them to craft and the shaping of natural materials to human purposes. Growing along streams and rivers, osiers represent liminal spaces and the plants adapted to wet margins. Poets use osiers to explore themes of bending without breaking, usefulness, and how some plants serve human needs while remaining wild. Osiers represent the working landscape and plants valued for what they provide.
Example
Example in poetry:
Osier willows with flexible stems represent basket-weaving, traditional crafts, and utility; In riparian poetry, osiers growing along waterways symbolize wetland ecology and human harvest; The colorful winter stems (red, orange, yellow) provide chromatic interest in dormant season verse; Osier beds cultivated for wickerwork appear in poems about sustainable use and renewable resources; The pollarded growth creates imagery of productive cycles and managed nature; In craft poetry, osiers represent the transformation of raw material into functional beauty
Additional Notes
Osier, a basket willow, is associated with riversides, wetlands, and craft: flexible rods cut, soaked, and woven into usable forms. In poetry it can symbolise pliancy, endurance, and the transformation of living growth into human-made object. Its watery habitat helps establish setting and sound: reedbeds, mud, slow currents. Osiers also suggest traditional rural labour and the seasonal rhythm of cutting and regrowth, making them valuable in poems about work, continuity, and hand-skill.
Also Known As
Willow Basket Willow
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