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 T

Tumbleweed

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 plant that breaks off at the base when dry and rolls with the wind, dispersing seeds across the landscape.

Detailed Definition
Tumbleweed symbolizes restlessness, wandering, and desolation in poetry. Its rolling across empty landscapes makes it icon of Western deserts and loneliness. In American poetry especially, tumbleweed represents aimless journeys, abandoned places, and lives blown by circumstance. The plant's seed dispersal method makes it represent spreading without control. Poets use tumbleweed to represent rootlessness, Western emptiness, things driven by wind and fate rather than choice, and the way some lives accumulate debris while rolling nowhere in particular.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tumbleweeds rolling across deserts represent rootlessness, Western landscapes, and dispersal; In cowboy poetry, tumbleweeds symbolize wandering life and open ranges; The plant's dramatic seed dispersal (entire plant breaks free) creates imagery of complete departure; In ghost town poetry, tumbleweeds represent abandonment and desolation; The spherical form rolling with wind adds geometric movement to landscape; Tumbleweeds as invasive species connect to poems about biological invasion
Additional Notes
The tumbleweed, breaking free to roll across open land, symbolises rootlessness, migration, and the restless spirit of frontier landscapes. Though often associated with arid regions, it is botanically a dispersal strategy. In poetry it can evoke loneliness, vastness, or the cyclical movement of fate driven by unseen winds.
Also Known As
Russian Thistle
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