John B Lee sent me this email after reading Tidings:

Hi Don:
I just finished reading Tidings. What an absolutely stunningly beautiful
book. I love the lyric simplicity of it (and in this context the word simplicity
is very high praise indeed). I read poem after poem and think it is a
masterpiece. There is an abiding sadness, but the sadness of wisdom, of
knowing that if we live long enough, we lose loved ones, we keep them in
our hearts though they are gone.
Long ago I coined the phrase the presence of absence to capture in as few
words as possible what I felt when I thought of those loved ones Id lost. We
preserve them in poems. We keep them alive in memory and dream. We
weep and grieve and lament and celebrate. Life is sometimes wonderful as
much as it is hard as it is wonderful because it is full of joy. Your book is
profound and wise and consoling. I will be reading it again and again
because it goes deep. I read it today on the beach in the sound of the waves
and the soothing feel of the sun on my skin.
This book of yours has the courage of autobiography without the honey trap
of the confessional. And I love the Christian experience that is peculiar to
our generation. We are amongst the last whose childhood was liturgical and
we basked in Bible stories. What is lost is not indoctrination, but tradition
that is not entirely secular humanist.
All good things,
John B.