Looking for the long sleepers

On Sunday I went looking for the long sleepers. It was a wonderful, sunny, Spring day and the ground was still hard with frost. Out of the sharp breeze there was real heat in the sun and there seemed a real chance of something very special, somethings that like the first warm rays of sun: adders!  I last saw there here over twenty years ago, these stone-cold smooth reptilian marvels. Back then we were lucky and found four basking adders. Today I found only the perfect places and holes to underground spaces. I lay back in the arms of the sun and watched a cock sparrowhawk zip past me twice, heard the faint talk of ravens on the wind, and dreamed of the slow cold, long slow, long cold sleepers tightly coiled, somewhere in the dark recesses of the jumbled moss stacked stones.