Poem: Lessons Not Learned

My mother has signed up for a
workshop on light and composition.
Why?
For seven decades, you’ve breathed
life onto paper and canvas
designed space with an aerialist’s balance and grace
captured vast essence with the simplest of tools:
a pencil, a brush, a stick of pastel.
The visiting instructor will, of course,
praise her results and take Mom’s 40 bucks.
Permission to override is always
granted to those whose larger sense of self
and by-the-book authority
blot your spotlight.
She never learns.
Neither do I.