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 U

Uktena

Mythology
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 Cherokee myth, Uktena is a colossal horned serpent dwelling in mountain lakes, guarding powerful crystals and embodying danger and mystery.

Detailed Definition
Uktena is a massive, horned serpent in Cherokee myth, dwelling in deep waters and mountains, guarding sacred crystals. It embodies danger, power, and the price of hubris. In poetry, Uktena symbolizes the perilous quest for knowledge, the duality of sacred power, and the spiritual geography of the Appalachians, often invoked in verses about transformation, warning, and the consequences of greed.
Example
Example in poetry:
Uktena, the Cherokee horned serpent, coils through poems as the guardian of crystal caves and dangerous medicine; A verse describes Uktena’s scales glowing with the power to heal or harm; Poets use Uktena to explore sacred danger: “Only the pure of heart may seek his crystal”; In ecological poetry, his lair marks protected springs; His horn becomes a compass in verse—pointing to truth through trial.
Additional Notes
Uktena is a massive, horned serpent in Cherokee mythology whose crystalline forehead scale holds great power but also danger; killing it brings prestige but often death—poets should present Uktena as a complex being of awe, not a mere monster, and link it to Cherokee concepts of medicine, risk, and spiritual ambition.
Also Known As
Horned Serpent The Great Horned Serpent
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