Double Surgeon’s Knot

When I tie one nearly invisible fishing line
to another nearly invisible fishing line

it feels like sorcery, a way for hands
to repair the past. My father
would water his plants
even while it was raining. Late
in his life he told me he didn’t believe
in hell, only heaven
and started smoking cigarettes.
He said he would understand
if, when the farm was mine, I sold it.
I haven’t. The acres swelter.
As he laid dead on his machine shop floor,
some time after I dialed 911,
a long line of red lights floated down
Route 45, silent as a river.

I wet the knot with my mouth
and draw the two sides in opposite directions
slowly, with full force
and it holds.