The Liturgy and The Hair

As the loudspeaker blasted out the liturgy,
I sat at the pew pretending to pay attention
to the words of God. I focused
my eyes on the hair in front of me,
long, black and curly with a big butterfly clip
clasping half of the lot in the middle,
a smaller one clipped at the right side
and two plain pins on the left. It was
a bunch of hair done well as every hair
was in place and the force of the fan
could only sway the few strands left to stray
at the front of the face (I was guessing
because the girl with the hair kept brushing
her hair away from her face). Unfortunately,
she did not stop at that. She would fiddle
with a strand or two behind her ears,
first the right side, then the left. After that
she would proceed to brush both hands over
the long strands down the back and swung
them to the side, first to the right then to the left.
Then she would twirl a strand that got disentangled
with all the brushing and the swinging.
And when she thought that the hair has gotten
a little out of place (which actually was not), she
would clasp and unclasp the clips and the pins
until she tied her hair up again the way it was before.
And I prayed “Thanks be to God”.
But that was not the end of the liturgy
or the doing of the hair because as the priest drone
on, the fiddling, the brushing and the swinging
of the hair went on. And I wondered
what was more dreary this Easter Sunday morning:
the liturgy or the hair?