The Door into Summer (FAWM 2026-5)
Words and music by Joe Ficklin © 2026-02

It's seventeen degrees across the Rockies / A winter storm is howling 'cross the plains I'm sitting in my house halfway to the clouds / With snowdrifts reaching up to window panes The furnaces does it's duty with a passion / The generator keeps the lights from going dim My tabby starts to scratching at the back door / He meows and looks at me, I look at him It's another world outside our home / So different from our yesterday Sometimes I think I'd like to go / But now I know I need to stay The music shifts like autumn's skies / I keep time with the drummer Leave this wintered world behind / There's a door I hope to find Stepping through I wouldn't mind / The gentle winds of summer We had a dream of industry before us / But circumstances filled you with dark greed He forced me from the company I started / With signals I was not prepared to read Betrayed by friends and she who once had loved me / Betrayed and sealed away in frozen sleep That thirty years would pass within a heart's beat / Awakened in a single future leap Now I'm standing in an unfamiliar city / This world is new yet many things the same The company I started was a failure / He and she had no one they could blame My wand'rings led me to a mad inventor / He said he found the bridge and reverse time Starting at the base of wrongful history / Find the ladder I was meant to climb It's another world outside our home / So different from our yesterday Sometimes I think I'd like to go / But now I know I need to stay The music shifts like autumn's skies / I keep time with the drummer Leave this wintered world behind / There's a door I hope to find Stepping through I wouldn't mind / The gentle winds of summer Returning thirty years I set the clock again / Followed breadcrumbs laid out by myself Searching, found the soulmate I was meant to have / Wrote the pages for the book upon the shelf Made a future bright with fame and glory / Love and laughter worth more to me than gold When winter roars I know it's not forever / For summer waits beyond the door's threshold It's another world outside our home / So different from our yesterday Sometimes I think I'd like to go / But now I know I need to stay The music shifts like autumn's skies / I keep time with the drummer Leave this wintered world behind / There's a door I hope to find Stepping through I wouldn't mind / The gentle winds of summer