One poet has paid tribute to the NDR with this poignant poem about the road, fear and nature. What do you think of it?

The Northern Distributor Route

The noise and din is over now

And the workmen all gone home

For left behind a road is laid

Black and hard well made and sound.

In bends and curves to sweep us round

In swiftly flowing driven motion

To avoid the built up and the build up

Of ever slowing car congestion

But something works to make us fear.

That we lose the wooded ways

So typical of our rural shire

The need for more than speed

Nature's beauty, peace and rest

Has made a bridge too far to link

Forced the juggernaut to stop

And us to pause and think

So there it stops this tarmac marvel

A question posed under lovely sky

A conundrum set to ask a probing question

Why?

We often fear what's to come

May be the worst

And when objectors tire and grandees decree

The worst betimes may happen

So flora and fauna in coloured variety

Be from us forever taken.

Such may come of this affair

When commissars decide

To close the missing link

And bury all and never blink

By rumbling tarmac slide

But in spite of this we may

Allow ourselves some hope

That good things that might be gone

Are sometimes kept

If imagination be given scope

To devise a happier end to this affair

Than the sad and tragic one

We all at present fear.

by Chris Gould

If you would like to submit a poem to our Poets Corner section, published in print everyday in the Norwich Evening News, please email eveningnewsletters@archant.co.uk.