Cover me with your sweet certainty. Pearl Reaching with eyes, they covered her as a girl, leaving a grain of gaze, the irritant stare women must cover everywhere, with pearl. Even in her own room alone, she curled back from the windows gleaming with their glare. Reaching with eyes, they covered her, as a girl, stopping her gaze with a long look, unfurled, taking her in as if she belonged there, a woman covered everywhere, with pearls draping her throat, before she learned to whirl beside the mirror, pierce her ears, or twine her hair. Reaching with eyes, they covered her, as a girl covers and hunches herself back in, to coil less of her toward the voyeur.
Women can cover everything, like pearls orbed and alive.
Rachel Hadas Rachel Hadas is Professor of English at Rutgers University and a poet, essayist and translator. She has authored twelve books as well as innumerable book reviews and scholarly papers. An Interview with Rachel Hadas , on this site. What starts as one more Monday morning class merges to a collective Dickinson separate vessels pooling some huge truth sampled bit by bit of each of us. She sings the pain of loneliness for one.