The Hairnet for the Convent Visit (Snood)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
Sister Mary Catherine Brennan,
born 1895, there in the novitiate dormitory
of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, London, 1923.
You sat beside me on that narrow bench,
your black woolen snood holding back the stray hairs,
scratchy against your scalp in the chilly 10 degrees Celsius air.
The room whitewashed, iron bed frames creaking softly,
a small wooden crucifix watching over us at 5:30 AM.
I watched your hands adjust it, tucking with that bone comb,
the one passed among you like a secret vow.

[Chorus]
Oh snood, you comforting weight,
dyed perhaps with walnut husk in hidden vanity,
smelling of damp wool and misty courtyard earth.
I copied you, Sister, pulled one over my own head,
felt its mesh ground me in the autumn morning.
Pemba saw and laughed, his chuckle like beeswax candle smoke,
but I kept it on, this reminder of propriety and quiet strength.

[Verse 2]
The horse-drawn cart had rattled us to the stone gatehouse,
mud on the path from last night's rain.
In the refectory, barley soup and rye bread in silence,
but your snood framed your face like a frame for unspoken thoughts.
Eleanor Pritchard's notes from 1931 whisper of such things,
tolerated indulgences in the sparse light.
I mimicked you, felt the faint earthy musk cling to me,
the feel of wool irritating yet oddly anchoring.

[Bridge]
What gaps in the record, unnamed novitiate No. 12,
your laughter shared in glances, undocumented but felt.
Pemba’s laugh echoed later, over the convent wall,
but in that moment, snood, you were my borrowed veil,
sealing a morning's mimicry in 50 degrees Fahrenheit chill.

[Outro]
Sister Mary Catherine, died 1972, but that October 1923 letter lingers,
'your comforting weight on my head,' you wrote.
I carried it home, this snood sensation,
Pemba's quiet joke fading into the sea air.