Aida Alcala Joshi, Ph. D.

El Cerrito, California

Aida Alcala Joshi, PH.D. is a Professor of International and Multicultural Education in the School of Education, University of San Francisco since 1975. Originally from the Philippines she was the recipient of two graduate scholarships grants awarded by the California Business and Professional Women's Club for which she earned both her Masters and Doctorate degrees in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. Married to another scholar, Sudhakar Arvind B. Joshi, in 1971, both became U.S. Citizens in 1978. Together they teamed up in undertaking educational projects including a Fulbright-Hays funded Group Project Abroad taking educators to India, through USF. Recently widowed on July 17,1996, Aida's recent poems reflect her great loss.

WINDS OF TIME

And so it goes...

You and I will be gone leaving imprints
on the winds of time.

The burst of life - the laughter, the joy,
the sorrow.

The love, the caring, the painful partings;

The struggle, the triumphs, the rewards-

All these leave imprints on the winds
of time.

New life, new generations will come...
as generations before us have come.

Endless.

Winds will unfold and reveal the imprints
of lives gone by - same moon, same stars,
same sun, same blue of the sky;

Same dusk and sunset, same sunrise...
all key witnesses to the unfolding times.

Endless.

Now ... your turn, making imprints on
the winds of time.

ARVIND

Like a cold wind, you breezed through in one
unguarded moment without saying goodbye...
Leaving me alone in chills, in emptiness, in loneliness,
Now I must carry on life meant for the two of us.
God was there - watching and listening to my pleas and prayers.
But His ways are strange, and it was time...
The finale of our life together is still a page unwritten.
Too much was unsaid against the rhythmic sound
of a breathing machine... and, yet.
You smiled in spite of the pain - a synthesis of twenty five
years of joy, of love and life, of togetherness.
Now...all these are but memories simmering
away the chills and pain of parting
God meant it to be...so I must live life twice as much.
walk the remaining path twice as much.
breath the same air twice as much.
resound the chirping of birds twice as much.
greet the sunlight twice as much,
delight those rose petals twice as much-
Until my turn comes...and this one last page
will be written when I finally rejoin my
ARVIND.