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

stratum

Geology
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 stratum is a distinct layer of rock or soil formed over time, often differing from the layers above and below it in material, age, or composition.

Detailed Definition
In Geology, a stratum is one of the natural layers, or beds, that make up sedimentary rock formations. Each stratum records conditions from a particular period of deposition, such as mud settling in a lake, sand accumulating on a shore, or organic material gathering in a swamp. Poets may use strata literally to evoke a landscape’s physical history, or figuratively to suggest accumulated layers of time, memory, culture, or experience.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Musketaquid,” farmers “prove the virtues of each bed of rock” and “Draw from each stratum its adapted use To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.” Here, stratum means a geological layer of rock or earth. Emerson emphasizes the farmers’ practical knowledge of the land: they recognize that different layers contain different minerals or materials that can be used for farming and craft. The word also reinforces the poem’s larger idea that nature holds hidden powers for those who learn how to read and work with it.
Additional Notes
Stratum comes from the Latin stratum, meaning “a covering” or “something spread out.” Its plural is traditionally strata, though stratums is sometimes used in general English. In Geology, strata are especially associated with sedimentary rocks, which form in layers through deposition over long periods. Related terms include bed, a layer of sedimentary rock; layer, a more general word; and stratigraphy, the study of rock layers and their sequence. Do not confuse stratum with a social stratum, which means a level or class within society. Poetry may deliberately draw on both meanings when discussing layers of land, history, or human life. In literary writing, strata can serve as a metaphor for buried histories, inherited memories, or successive emotional experiences.
Also Known As
Layer Geological Bed Sedimentary Layer Level
Skip to main content