The clip begins at the scene of an accident: flashing lights, a traffic jam, smoke rising into the air from an overturned car. In the highway-turned-parking lot, the driver’s door of a silver pickup swings open, as heat waves rise from asphalt and automobiles...

Ms. Davies’ wrinkled face scans the room. “I been livin’ in this contry for over 65 yeers.” She leans in and puts the backside of her hand flat against the smiling corner of her mouth. “But I’m still the Queen’s gurl!”

The foreheads of four men leak beads of sweat as they sway shoulder to shoulder, like a buoy tipping back and forth at the gentle wake of a motorboat. A statue of the Virgin Mary, hands folded at her breast and face resolute yet gentle, towers above them...

I had never seen a field of wildflowers quite like it. The ground had responded to the spring rains with a fertility that flashed flames of fire: reds, oranges, and yellows dancing in the wind like the tongues above the apostles on Pentecost...

My four-year-old niece is in my arms, her wispy blonde hair floating above her head like spider webs adrift the fall wind. We are jumping on a discarded box-spring mattress near a pond on the backside of a spillway dam. A giggle bursts from her lungs. “Again!!” This time, we are astronauts on the surface of the moon...

I sit in a bedroom of my grandparent’s old house, a shelf over my head containing hundreds of thimbles collected by my grandmother who had no use for them, her fingers tougher than any ceramic after sewing the blue jeans, feed sack dresses, and cloth diapers of seven children...