I hope your muse is back to stay. Mine was gone for way over a year. And now that she's back she won't shut up, and likes to keep me up when she decides writing Is more important than sleeping. But this is way better than that vaguely empty "something's missing" feeling that not writing brought me, and the dread that the not being able to create might be permanent. It's happened to me a couple of times in my life, and it was for years, not weeks or months.

Never figured out why, the muses is a mysterious bunch. Maybe they need a sabbatical, writing their own novel because their muse is back, or all get together and have a wild creative art-happening shindig on some literary mount Olympus. But they come back. (Looking at the careers of my favorite authors when the dry spell does become permanent or the writing just turns to crap there's usually drugs or alcohol to blame...)

So if this isn't her return, but a false hope (which has happened to me during those dry spells, one little story and then... nothing.) it doesn't mean she won't be back. She will. But in her time. And then the stories and the right words to tell them will come; and it will be glorious!

Loved your 9/11 emergency responders poem. Not a happy handful of lines but it felt right.
hugs, Veronica