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

Pot Holder

Domesticity
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 padded cloth used to handle hot cookware. It symbolizes practical protection and habitual care.

Detailed Definition
The pot holder is a small barrier between skin and heat, and its usefulness makes it a vivid symbol of ordinary protection. In poetry, its worn padding, singed edge, or familiar pattern may reveal years of cooking within a household. It can appear in scenes of hurried meals, inherited kitchens, or hands reaching for something too hot to touch directly. The object invites reflections on care as a learned, practical response to danger.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The pot holder, burned at one corner, passed from hand to hand above the boiling stew,” showing practical care amid heat; A poet may use a pot holder to portray a parent protecting a child from an oven’s danger; “I reached for the pot holder before lifting the grief of the kettle,” turns a kitchen action into metaphor; A handmade pot holder quilted from old clothing can represent resourcefulness and the persistence of family stories
Additional Notes
A pot holder protects the hand from heat, so it can symbolize practical care performed almost automatically. Its worn padding, stitched patterns, or scorch marks may reveal long use in a kitchen. In poetry, it can also frame the tension between nourishment and risk: cooking sustains people, but heat can burn. Compare it with oven mitts, kettles, pans, aprons, and the careful handling of emotion.
Also Known As
Potholder Hot Pad
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