John Leax, American poet, essayist and fiction writer, lived on a small farm in New York State and taught writing at Houghton College. There was never enough time to do all the work on the farm, and the old orchard, planted higgledy-piggledy long ago by someone on a hillside, was neglected and overgrown. One day John was driving through the large, carefully groomed orchards of central Ontario, and found himself vaguely depressed by the endless rows of well-ordered trees. He reflected on his feeling, and on th…