In the Valley of Decision

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD [is] near in the valley of decision. Joel 3:14

What a difficult place to be...
The city is being built and its twelve gates,
Each one a single beautiful pearl.

But what is a pearl? What sort of gate?
And who can see its forming?
It is a boundary
Between the foreign matter
And the place of life.

And how great the faith required of the one
Who sees the foreign matter,
Sees what could infect and spread death.
The one who must place it in the soft fleshy cavity and close the shell.
And wait.

...yet still believes for the (super)natural formation of the pearl.