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

Pyracantha

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 thorny evergreen shrub with white flowers and brilliant red, orange, or yellow berries, also called firethorn.

Detailed Definition
Pyracantha symbolizes protection, warning, and beauty combined with danger in poetry. Its vicious thorns and spectacular berries embody defense and display coexisting. The berries persisting through winter provide food for birds and visual warmth in cold seasons. In garden poetry, pyracantha represents plants that protect property while beautifying it, security and ornament united. Poets use pyracantha to explore how beauty can be defended, the price of access to beauty, and things that simultaneously attract and repel.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pyracantha's orange or red berries and fierce thorns represent beauty protected by danger; In hedge poetry, pyracantha symbolizes defensive boundaries and living security; The berries persisting through winter provide food-source imagery for wildlife poetry; The contrast between spring's white flowers and autumn's bright fruit traces seasonal progression; Pyracantha espaliered on walls creates living tapestries and architectural plant sculpture; The plant's firethorn name adds dramatic imagery to garden protection poems
Additional Notes
Pyracantha, or firethorn, combines beauty and defence: white blossom followed by dense, bright berries and formidable thorns. In poetry it can represent protection, boundaries, and the fierce brightness of winter colour. The berries’ persistence makes it a plant of the cold season, feeding birds and holding the eye when most leaves have gone. It can also suggest the moral complexity of “ornamental weaponry”: a hedge that beautifies while warning off approach, perfect for poems about guarded households or guarded hearts.
Also Known As
Firethorn
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