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 S

Seagull

Birds
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 colloquial term for gulls, especially those frequenting coasts and harbors.

Detailed Definition
Seagulls symbolize freedom, adaptability, and the liminal space between land and sea in poetry. Their cries over beaches and piers evoke nostalgia, loneliness, or the eternal presence of the ocean. Often portrayed as both scavengers and majestic soarers, they embody contradiction. Poets use seagulls to explore themes of transience, urban-wild interfaces, and the haunting echoes of memory carried on salt air and wind.
Example
Example in poetry:
In maritime poetry, the seagull’s cry over harbors and beaches symbolizes freedom, nostalgia, and the eternal presence of the sea; Poets use seagulls to explore the liminal space between land and ocean, civilization and wilderness; In urban verse, seagulls scavenging city streets represent adaptability and the blurring of natural/artificial boundaries; The seagull’s white wings against storm clouds evoke hope or divine presence in romantic and spiritual poetry; Ecopoets critique seagull population booms tied to human waste, exploring unintended ecological consequences; The seagull’s soaring flight inspires metaphors for detachment, perspective, and the soul’s longing for transcendence.
Additional Notes
Seagull: Often used interchangeably with “gull,” but “seagull” is not a scientific term—most gulls are coastal but not exclusively marine. In poetry, it evokes the sea, freedom, or urban adaptability. Be precise: specify species or context to avoid vagueness; consider the gull’s dual role as both majestic and scavenger.
Also Known As
Sea Gull Gull Herring Gull Common Gull
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