Yesterday I walked down into the woods in the drizzle and found a handful of fiddleheads. Now I really believe spring is here, though the weather is still so cool that we've had to light fires in the woodstove every morning.

I keep writing and writing. Yesterday's poem was set in 1755, at the height of what historian Fred Anderson calls the "cold calculus of terror" inflicted on the Pennsylvania frontier by bands of Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo warriors." My poem is narrated by a barely literate white-woman settler in fear for her children . . . and with good reason.

How to write as if I am someone who doesn't write easily but who is overflowing with feeling: this is such a mesmerizing task. I am so excited.