Grouse Grid

In the early weeks of my dad’s post-stroke delirium, 

we watch a NOVA documentary about grouse.

It’s his first screen time, for an hour we follow

the prairie chickens hunting for worms,

scurrying across grass and scratching to build homes.

Then comes a segment about mating habits,

and I’m brought back to 11 years old, embarrassed

in front of my dad by even the euphemism “mating.”

But he, delirious and perseverating on the fowl,

(and, we’ll find out, severely dehydrated) starts spinning

a matrix of grouse offspring in his mind, a trembling aspen 

family tree, if you will, speculating on how many

of the grouse population would be closely related 

and in what ways. He’s fixated on grouse genealogy,

remembering a slew of grouse facts after the screen goes black

which he recites to Monica when she comes home

from work. We do not yet know how far he will go

in his recovery. His brain is made of tallgrass

roots tangled in a reliant underground.

But the more he talks about grouse, the less I worry.

He says he once knew grouse scientists in Madison

who drove the prairie in a VW van with a wild antenna.

I feel a kinship with these people in his mind.

I, too, am monitoring flight patterns, making sure

the population is okay.