An interesting dilemma

There's a knot in the tree at the end of the garden,
That serves as the ashtray for a childhood memory,
There's a ghostly river that runs through the mind,
And serves as a schoolboy's malicious demands,

As the past reveals what couldn't be answered,
And the measured mistake of an awkward unplanned,
Moment in time that is forever obscured,
And the distant dreams of that difficult schoolboy,

Clutching at straws so hard to hold on to,
The one thing about the past that was liked,
Accepting the difference that 3 years can make,
To a friendship once so brittle and faked,

A separate existence was inevitable failure,
An unenviable position for the latter to take,
As the doorways close on that old chapter,
The new one opens for him to walk through.