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 P

Persicaria

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 family of plants including knotweed and smartweed, with small pink or white flower spikes.

Detailed Definition
Persicaria appears in poetry as symbol of persistence, adaptability, and sometimes invasiveness. Various species represent different qualities: some are beautiful garden plants, others aggressive weeds. This duality makes persicaria useful for exploring how the same traits can be valued or reviled. In nature poetry, persicaria represents plants that thrive in disturbed areas and at water's edge. Poets use it to explore themes of taking advantage of opportunities, aggressive growth, and how persistence can be either admirable or troublesome depending on context.
Example
Example in poetry:
Persicaria's (knotweed family) varied forms allow poets to explore themes of diversity within families; In Japanese poetry, ornamental persicaria represents autumn gardens and delicate pink or red spires; The plant's jointed stems inspire imagery of segmented growth and articulated structure; Water pepper (persicaria) in stream poetry represents riparian plants and pungent wildness; The plant's persistence (some species invasive) creates metaphors for unstoppable spread; Persicaria's color range from pink to crimson adds chromatic warmth to late-season gardens
Additional Notes
Persicaria includes knotweeds and smartweeds, plants that often occupy wetlands and disturbed ground. In poetry it can represent adaptability and the tenacity of marginal flora, sometimes shading into invasiveness depending on species and setting. Its small flower spikes are modest, so it suits poems attentive to texture and pattern rather than show. As a taxonomic term, it can also serve an academic register, grounding a poem in ecological specificity and inviting readers to see “weeds” as members of complex plant communities.
Also Known As
Knotweed Smartweed
Skip to main content