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The Winter's Crossing
(1993)   

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Sometimes I feel so far away
From all the ones I love
The storms that raged along this coast
Keep every ship from sailing

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 From Billy Joel: Song by Song:
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    ‘The Winter Crossing’ is an unreleased and uncompleted song that Billy wrote around the same time of River of Dreams. A demo is on YouTube, see below, It is a moody and evocative song about a man’s lifelong relationship with the sea.

   Billy dismisses it as ‘really pretentious and stupid'  When Billy first played the song for Kortchmar and engineer Niko Bolas, they humorously sank behind the recording console. ‘I see their entire faces and as the song goes along, I see less of their faces. Now I only see up to their noses. Then, as I’m further into the song, I just see eyes – very wide, open eyes. And I realise as I’m singing it that this really is a piece of shit.​   Quotes from:  ​Robbins, Ira, ‘Billy Joel Still Keeping the Faith’, Newsday, 13 August 1993, 

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Words and Music by Billy Joel

When I was just a boy I dreamt
I'd run away to sea
And sign aboard some merchant ship
And sail across the ocean

When I became a man I put
My childhood things away
And gave up all the dreams I had
Of sailing on the ocean

So long, so long
I wave goodbye to my old friend the sea
It's winter time and you know
I'm not what I used to be

Sometimes I feel so far away
From all the ones I love
The storms that raged along this coast
Keep every ship from sailing

And who would brave
A voyage in the January gale
The boy who ran away to sea
Can make a winter crossing

Come on, come on
He cried, come with me
To the other shore
But I've been gone too long to make
The crossing anymore

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