I have lost my muse

I met someone, nine years ago, that I experienced in a way much like William Stafford evokes in his lovely poem, "When I Met My Muse". Here is that poem:

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing.
 They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased.
 Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent.
 I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched.
 "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said.
 "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.
" And I took her hand.

As the energy of my muse fades from my being, I am finding it hard to do my creative writing. The last several times I went to my writers' group, I'm not really writing.  I go to hang onto my identity as a writer, an identity still in development. I go with hope that my muse will return.  I go because my writer homies support me. I go because I love the writers. I go because I love me.

Is a muse a person?  Can a muse be a person? Or is a muse one's inspiration?  I don't know answers to my questions.  I only know that for many happy years, I wrote happily, pleasing myself greatly.

My muse is gone. Is this writer's block?  It could be.

I know what it is like to have every glance at the world be a kind of salvation. That describes the flow state when I am in my golden tunnel.  I still get glimpses of the golden tunnel but with a muse, I wrote more. I wrote better. I wrote happier. Every word I wrote was to my muse. I knew all along that the person who appeared in my sights in the golden tunnel was not really my muse. I was in a flow state before I met hum.

Still, I loved the infrequent times we got together. I was as happy as I was with my baby when I was with him. A mellow, glowing happiness that drew upon his radiance and, it seemed to me, deepened my golden tunnel light.

Sigh. Maybe she's not gone, my muse.  Lately, very lately, I have experience my power and my voice differently.  Working through.