Naked and poor -- that covers the start of life (4)
I believe the answer is:
bald
'naked' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'poor that covers the start of life' is the wordplay.
'poor' becomes 'bad' ('bad' can be similar in meaning to 'poor'**).
'that covers' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the start of' says to take the initial letters.
The first letter of 'life' is 'l'.
'bad' placed around 'l' is 'BALD'.
'and' is the link.
(Other definitions for bald that I've seen before include "Blunt; hairless" , "Unadorned" , "Lacking hair on the head" , "Plain; hairless" , "Not covered with hair" .)