Recovering
        Brazil's National Museum fire

After the fire, a search to recover
Luzia Woman, the Americas' oldest
human remains. There's hope, a sturdy metal box.
Not so for the mask collections, feather work,
specimens of lace bugs the world now doesn't have.
Nor even, anymore, the orange height of that blaze.
Having survived worse, an iron meteorite
rests unscathed. And Luzia? Her tragedy—
an attack or accident, then eons and eons. Any hurt
requires its time. Then all it took to unearth her,
to define a face, sculpt the hint of a smile.
She, the jewel of a burned-out palace
still smoldering at sunrise.

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Copyright © 2022 Julie Funderburk All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission