Quenda and Cooli

At the edge of the lake, between water and sedges and rushes and reeds, lives cooli the buff banded rail, and quenda the southern brown bandicoot. How similar they look: one with a long beak and short legs, wings folded back, rarely flying, mostly running—a kind of orangey and zebra black and white; the other with a long snout, strong back legs and short front ones (that it kind of hop-rests on), all browny black. They are both about the same size, both a very similar form, both living in this same zone by the lake’s edge; both fashioned by this same place, and fashioning it.