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 R

rib

Nautical
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 Nautical language, a rib is one of the curved structural timbers or metal frames that gives a ship’s hull its shape and strength.

Detailed Definition
A ship’s ribs run across the hull much as ribs support a human chest, forming the framework to which planking is fastened. Damage to a rib can weaken or breach the vessel’s side, making repairs urgent, especially in rough seas. In older maritime poetry, “rib” may refer to a single frame or more broadly to the ship’s internal structural timbers.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Forecastle Sailor or the Guardian Frigate,” the sailor says, “Providence help’d us to bale her, / and we manag’d to patch up her rib.” Here, “her rib” refers to a damaged part of the ship’s hull framework, which the crew repairs while also bailing out water. Earlier in the poem, “I pelted his rib” uses rib in its ordinary human sense: the speaker strikes Ned Junk in the side.
Additional Notes
The Nautical use is metaphorically related to the ribs of a human or animal body: both provide supporting structure. Related shipbuilding terms include frame, timber, futtock, planking, hull, and keel. A rib is not usually the outer surface of the ship; the outer boards or plates are the planking or shell, while ribs support them from within. In older sea songs and poems, singular “rib” can sometimes stand for a damaged structural area rather than one precisely identified frame.
Other Meanings of “rib”
Also Known As
Tease Mock Taunt Jest
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