Snowies

Fledgling owlets were coming of age
while testing their wings
as Father soared overhead,
his children grouped for one more lesson.

Feathers puffed in awkward stance
one by one as if to school
beyond the tundra fields
of late summer skeeters,

to where fat lemmings flourish:
just fly over the last
grass-choked stream, said Mother
(but they decide to wade across),

past wind-blown dunes of green, where
lies the sea beyond, with more lemmings
that hide and play near their burrows than
any snow owl on the wing could wish for.