by Scott Thomas Outlar

In late 2014, I wrote a piece titled “Some Poems Are More Serious Than Others.” It was still less than a year since my father had passed away at that point, and the poem was written about the final two days of his life. The period described was exactly five years ago today, the same date on which I am writing this essay for Credo Espoir. Here in the woods of Mountain Park, January 31, 2019, searching for the right words to explain how that great man would soon depart us on February 1^st, exactly six months after the diagnosis of cancer had been given. Here, now, at this same park where he once taught me to play baseball as a child, where we spent hundreds of hours together through the years, moving progressively to each larger practice field as I grew from a…