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

straw

Farming
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

Straw is the dry stalks left after cereal grain has been harvested and threshed.

Detailed Definition
Straw is an agricultural by-product used for animal bedding, thatching, packing, fuel, and sometimes rough fodder. Its pale colour, dryness, rustle, and lightness make it a familiar material in rural imagery. In poetry, straw may suggest poverty, humility, harvest remains, fragility, or practical resourcefulness. A straw bed evokes simple or harsh living, while the proverbial final straw represents a small burden that causes collapse. Nativity scenes also connect straw with sacredness arising in the humblest surroundings.
Example
Example in poetry:
Straw spread in a stable can symbolise humble comfort and practical care; A straw bed may evoke poverty, simplicity, or sacred humility; Straw left after threshing can represent what remains when value has been removed; A figure described as grasping at straws may be shown clinging desperately to a fragile hope.
Additional Notes
Straw is the dry stalk left after cereal grain has been removed, whereas hay is dried grass cut mainly for fodder. Straw is used for bedding, thatching, packing, mulch, and sometimes rough feed. In poetry, it may suggest harvest remains, poverty, fragility, humility, or practical resourcefulness. Nativity imagery gives it sacred associations. Related terms include wheat, barley, threshing, chaff, bedding, thatch, hay, stubble, and sheaf.
Also Known As
cereal straw dry stalks Strae
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