The Lives we Eat in our Bread

Farmers who plant and harvest grain;
millers grind that grain in to flour;
bakers turn the flour into dough,
and bake it to make our bread.
They ship it to the grocers 
where we buy our bread. 

 And, yet, there were many others:
the manufacturers of ovens; 
providers of fuel for ovens;
those who made tractors, harvesters, and trucks?
even those who mined 
and processed the ore to make steel.

 There is no end to the lists of those who:
provide light by which we see, water that we drink,
fuel for heat and gasoline for cars, 
even clothes we wear.
Still, the list does not end there: there are teachers 
and doctors and nurses, police officers and soldiers, 
policemen, lawyers and politicians.

 We rarely think of the lives we, in fact, use up, often criticize, 
and, too often, take them for granted.