What Happens When a Copywriter Dies?

INTRO:
A copywriter's work is measured in other people's sales, other people's brands, other people's glory. This poem asks what happens when the one who wrote the words is gone. It is funny, in the way that true things sometimes are, and sad in the same breath.

By Vincent R. Pozon

The cashier beeping groceries
out the store stops and frowns
at a tin can she thought had vanished,
she hmms, shrugs, then beeps it on.

When a copywriter dies, do the bottles
and brands set on the airstrip
of the checkout counter pause momentarily
in the business of flying out of the store?

In the quiet and cold of the night,
while the watchmen yawn, shotguns on laps,
do the shelves inside rattle a little,
lights flicker, for a second at least?

When the handsomely-labelled tumble
into plastic bags, do they do so
in slow motion, silently,
preening as if for the camera,

when a copywriter breathes his last,
will the laundry detergent he kept alive,
-- rescued by his genius
refuse to froth and foam today?

At the year-end sales conference,
will they find an aberration in the charts,
a spike at that moment the copywriter died?
Will brows furrow for a second at least?

The advertisement that wrenched
the drunkard out of the wallow,
that made the addict resolve
that he will be addict no more,

will he remember the argument
crafted so he may form a fist,
the copy writ to anger the innermost,
to change his clothes and stride?

The marketing men whose careers
saved with his words – they might remember,
they might pause, nod to themselves,
raise a glass, or two. They might.