Enduring Friendships

Over the decades I have had many friendships.
Broadly they divide themselves into two types.

Those with who it took a long time
before the foundations of the friendship
were firm to the point of unshakeable
however much life shifted us around.

Those where I have held on,
and I kept some sort of peace
 in spite of my not needing their aggro,
or their almighty ego.

In these friendships people assume
that when other people know them
for who they are
then they never need to learn
who they were for themselves.

In the former the recognition,
as we both relearned who we were
when circumstances tested us,
has been remarkable and positive.

It has been a proving of our instincts
about what was right with hindsight,
that we could not see at the time.

In the latter life was exciting
but telling the friendship
apart from the stoney ground
that it was set in
made for rather testing times.

Both ways, here's to endurance.