I am very pleased to welcome everybody to this final session of the Israel-Australia-UK Leadership Dialogue. We have an impressive panel of speakers, each of whom will speak briefly and then we will turn this symposium over to the participants in the Dialogue for comments and questions.
Thomas Jones – Tom, as I know him – is a serious poet who cares to communicate with an audience – to us here, especially.
The Ph.D. thesis, completed in 2016 at the School of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, investigated the application of a theory of real options to decision-making on major transport projects.
So you think you know it,
That statue in the Galleria
dell’Accademia? Wait. Before we
Get there, look for his last
Sculptures, unfinished.
Feet piston-push.
Muffled oomph!
Fingers grab bars.
Bang, swing, collapse.
Ten seconds flat.
Sniffs of irritation, bow ties,
sleek and snappy, in their eyes
eager to please, easy expertise,
starched white, jet black
connoisseur power pack.
Paused on the track, the sudden quiet
Seems to coax a mob of Big Greys
To stromp through the wet scrub, buoyantly
Springing, pogo stick jumps.
Be careful what you see.
Wretched hunter, Actaeon,
losing direction, stumbles with
lingering attention on Diana,
bathing naked.
Lobsters are cold crustaceans,
shield, flesh, and snapping claws.
Or Dreamers? Or is that clutching
at straws? Monads without feeling?
Bursting with energy
like Des Renford’s swimming,
loggerhead and green turtles plunge
plump shells into water,
surfacing for breath, rhythmically
sweeping thick oars through the ocean,
frothing the surface.