Rootabaga Exegetics

To understand the Rootabaga Poems,  it helps to know a considerable number of hoboes;  but sometimes a knowledge of basic QED comes in handy as well.

Thus, consider this monostich from the Field Notes to the collection:

“Now Tommy, you put that bickerjingle   back into the bickerjingle jar.”

Funny word, that;  like “snapdoodle” or “whipperginnie”.  But, instead of spreading wings like these (as indeed it does not deserve to, as the space of human fantasy is already sufficiently crowded as it is) -- instead of breaking free from the fragile setting of its virtual birth -- it goes right back in the bickerjingle jar !

The Land of Whipperginny

The ancients had a haiku, said pretty much the same thing:

Virtual photon:

so soon as it’s emitted

it gets re-absorbed.

Yet there is another, gentler lesson here:

In Rootabaga Country, each thing, each least thing  has its proper and appointed place: 
if only, as for the humble bickerjingle, its own appointed jar.